Get the picture? AP Images puts a face on history

Need a visual image for a presentation? Are you looking for a politician’s portrait, photos of a cultural or historical event or the Villanova basketball team? Falvey now provides access to AP Images, a digital archive of more than one million Associated Press photos.

Besides photos, the archive also includes over 100,000 maps, graphs, charts, logos, flags and illustrations, as well as audio files.

Black and white photos from as far back as the beginning of the 20th century give a visual impression of historical events and people. You can see historical images from the Great Depression, the Chinese Revolution, the Russian tsar or the 1948 Berlin airlift, pictured here (read related article on post-war Berlin).

Sports aficionados will find the archive a treasure trove of photos of famous athletes, such as Babe Ruth, Jackie Robinson and Brett Favre.

The images in the Associated Press archive cover a wide variety of news events: There is an excellent chance that the archive has that image you need. The archive also includes a wealth of regional and local images, including pictures of Father Donohue assuming the University presidency.

An advanced search feature allows you to focus on a specific time period and media type. The underlying search engine finds related pictures for all search results, expanding your retrieval possibilities beyond what you request. Under the license agreement students and faculty can use all images in the archive for non-commercial, teaching-related purposes only.

Visit the archive from the Library’s home page under Databases by Title.

You’ll get the picture.

Contributed by Jutta Siebert