Image collections
Birkbeck has various image collections, which you can access and browse via LUNA Imaging software.
You can print and embed images without registering with LUNA, but if you register you can:
- export images (Birkbeck students and staff only)
- create media groups and slideshows
- share images and media groups with other users
- access the Garden History Online and London Architecture Online collections (available to Birkbeck students and staff only)
Register at the top of the Birkbeck Luna page. You can choose your own username and password but use your Birkbeck email address if you'd like to access Garden History or London Architecture Online. It can take a few days for access to these collections to be set up.
If you have any problems, please contact us.
Browse the image collections
Birkbeck image collections
- Birkbeck History: images of buildings, staff, students and important events in Birkbeck's history.
- The Album of Anna Birkbeck: a complete digitisation of Anna Birkbeck's 250-page album, rediscovered in the Birkbeck archives. The diary spans the years 1825 to c. 1862 and contains contributions from noted intellects of the day, including an unpublished poem by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, entitled 'The Death of Love'.
- The Album of Anna Birkbeck (individual pages): individual pages from Anna Birkbeck's album, which makes it easier to search.
- The Conservation of the Album of Anna Birkbeck: a collection of photographs of the conservation work undertaken on Anna Birkbeck's album by Alexandra Bruce in 2011.
- The Scrapbook of Anna Birkbeck: a digitisation of Anna Birkbeck's scrapbook, rediscovered in the Birkbeck archives.
- The Scrapbook of Anna Birkbeck (individual pages): selected individual pages from Anna Birkbeck's scrapbook, which makes it easier to search.
- Officers of Birkbeck College: a collection of portraits of the past and present Presidents, Principals, Masters and Secretaries of Birkbeck.
- Coade Stone: a collection of digitised slides, bequeathed to Birkbeck by Averill Alison Kelly, which includes images of architectural, monumental, sculptural and ornamental uses of Coade Stone, developed by Eleanor Coade in the late 1700s, in the UK.
- Garden History Online: Available to Birkbeck students and staff only, register with LUNA to access. Over 1350 images of historical and contemporary gardens and parks around the world, digitised from Birkbeck's former Central Slide Library.
- London Architecture Online: Available to Birkbeck students and staff only, register with LUNA to access. Over 5500 images of London architecture and urban spaces from the sixteenth to the twenty-first century, mostly digitised from Birkbeck's former Central Slide Library.
Other image collections
- General collections
- LUNA Commons Collections: open access institutional digital image collections (over 138,000 images) made accessible via LUNA Commons.
- Cornell University collections
- Arts and humanities collections
- AMICA Library: 108,000 fine art images from major museums around the world.
- Art & Architecture: Courtauld Institute of Art online image archive.
- Artcyclopedia: a portal for art history, art movements, artists, art images and links to major art museums.
- Beazley Archive of Classical Art and Architecture
- British Library Images Online - Arts and humanities collection
- Collage Portal: 130,000 works from the London Metropolitan Archives.
- French Sculpture Census: French sculpture 1500-1960 in North American public collections
- Flickr Commons: access to a range of historic public photography archives.
- Hypermedia Research Archive: complete writings and pictures of Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
- US National Library of Medicine: 70,000 images (portraits, photographs, cartoons, posters) of the history of medicine from the fifteenth to the twenty-first century.
- Taipei National Palace Museum: around 5000 images of artworks, including rare books, ceramics, paintings, bronzes, jewellery, studio accessories, costumes, and more, from the National Palace Museum in Taipei, spanning seven millennia of Chinese history and prehistory.
- Visual Arts Data Service (VADS)
- Web Gallery of Art: a searchable database of over 38,000 European artworks from 1100 to 1850.
- The Wenceslaus Hollar Digital Collection: 2455 illustrative prints of seventeenth-century England from the University of Toronto Library.
- Arts and humanities museums and galleries
- Amsterdam: Rijksmuseum
- Birmingham: City Art Gallery: Pre-Raphaelites Collection
- Cambridge: Fitzwilliam Museum
- France: Joconde: a database of French museum collections.
- London: British Museum Images: the British Museum is the authoritative source of images depicting world culture and history including ceramics, sculpture, prints, drawings, and paintings.
- London: British Museum Collections: research database of over three million objects in the British Museum Collections.
- London: City of London Archives and Guildhall Art Gallery: 130,000 images of London life.
- London: National Gallery
- London: National Portrait Gallery
- London: Royal Academy of Arts
- London: Tate Collection
- London: V & A Museum Images
- London: V & A Collections
- London: Wallace Collection
- Madrid: Prado Museum
- New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art
- Paris: Louvre Collections
- Paris: Musee d'Orsay
- Science collections
- British Library Images Online - Science collection
- CalPhotos: natural history image collection.
- Flickr Commons
- NASA Images
- OpenGeoscience: maps, download data, scans, photos.
- US National Library of Medicine: images from the history of medicine (US).
- Wellcome Images
- Social sciences, geography and history collections
- British Library Images Online - Social science geography and history
- Digital Bodleian: Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford special collections
- Flickr Commons
- Historic England Archive: photographs from Historic England.
- Historical Photographs of China
- NASA Images
- US National Library of Medicine: images from the history of medicine (US).
- New York Public Library Digital Collections
- School of Oriental and African Studies Digital Archives and Special Collections
- Wellcome Images
- The Wenceslaus Hollar Digital Collection: artistic works of Wenceslaus Hollar from the University of Toronto Library.
Notice and take-down policy
- Complaints may concern, but are not limited to:
- rights issues
- unauthorised digital reproduction
- copying and data protection.
- If you are the rights owner of any material in the Birkbeck Image Collections that you have not given permission to publish, please contact the Image Collections and Digital Media staff, detailing:
- full metadata details of the record that describes the image
- exact URL where you found the image
- confirmation that you are the rights owner or that you are authorised to act for the rights owner
- the reason you believe your rights have been infringed
- your contact details (including email address and telephone).
- Birkbeck Library will acknowledge receipt of your complaint and make an initial assessment of its validity. If the complaint is deemed valid, the image and metadata record will be temporarily removed from the Birkbeck LUNA Collections website, pending an agreed solution.
- Birkbeck Library will conduct further investigation on the image and/or metadata and aim to resolve the issue swiftly and amicably to the satisfaction of both Birkbeck Library and the complainant, with the following possible outcomes:
- The image and metadata records both remain unchanged.
- The image remains unchanged, but the metadata record is amended.
- The image and metadata record are both permanently removed.
- If Birkbeck Library and the complainant cannot agree to a solution, the material will remain unavailable through the Birkbeck LUNA Collections website until a resolution is reached.
How to get help
- Birkbeck LUNA collections:
- for general enquiries, please contact us.
- for technical help, visit the LUNA help pages.
- For guidance on finding and using digital media in your research or teaching, visit the JISC Digital Media pages.
- For help with referencing, visit our Moodle pages.