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Image collections

Birkbeck has various image collections that include material related to the history of the college, London architecture, and garden history.

Birkbeck's image collections can be browsed on a database called JSTOR.

Registering for an account on JSTOR will give you a personal workspace that allows you to save and organise your images in folders. You can share items and folders with Birkbeck students and staff and export them as reference lists or presentations. There is more information in the links below:

If you have any problems, please . 

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 The diary spans the years 1825 to c.1862 and contains contributions from noted intellects of the day, including an unpublished poem by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, entitled 'The Death of Love'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.  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. 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

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 JSTOR 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.