From its inception in 1883, the Department of Art and Archaeology has been collecting documentation concerning art, architecture, and material culture for research and teaching. Resources for teaching (slides and, later, digital images) were primarily managed by catalogers in the Department’s Slides and Photographs division.

Outside of their classrooms, the Department’s archaeologists created an extensive repository of notebooks, photographs, illustrations, and other materials related to the excavations and surveys they undertook; these archaeological archives have always required their own reading room and designated curator. This curator was also tasked with overseeing the large collection of photographs and other archival materials that had been collected by members of the Department throughout its hundred-year plus history. Together, these collections (the archaeological and archival) came to be managed by the Department’s Research Photographs division. Throughout the 2000s, members of this division strove to make these collections more discoverable by listing them online and making their associated images available when copyright allowed. This, along with advances in digitization techniques, launched a new wave of interest in the Department’s unique resources.

By 2010, substantial personnel overlap between those members of the Department who were managing Slides and Photographs (by this time called the Visual Resources Collection) and those who were responsible for Research Photographs rendered the distinction between the two divisions insignificant. Today, the Visual Resources staff provides assistance to faculty, staff, and students using images in their research and teaching, and manages the Department’s archaeological and archival holdings.

• Manage and deliver digital images for teaching (through, for example, JSTOR and Canvas) and the department's archaeological and archival collections.
• Offer instruction and support services (through one-on-one or small group consultations) to members of the Princeton community around finding, making, and using images for research and teaching.
• Collaborate on and contribute to research, especially art historical and archaeological projects that prioritize data-driven approaches, digitally-forward methods, and public-facing outcomes.
• Lead workshops for undergraduate and graduate students about the services we provide (e.g.: concerning image copyright, data visualization techniques, materials in our archaeological and archival collections, etc.) that can be tailored to the specific interests of the students.

Please email [email protected] to set up a consultation if you are:

• considering paying for an image from a commercial vendor, like Alamy or Getty Images.
• purchasing a digital camera for research and don't know where to start.
• trying to figure out if you need permission to use an image of a work of art on a web site you are building.
• hoping you won't have to settle for a poor quality image of a work of art for a presentation.
• undertaking research in one of the department's archaeological or archival collections, such as the documentation from the excavation of Antioch or Morgantina.
• thinking about art as data and hoping to quantify and visualize your work.
• … and more!