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Using Artstor: A Guide for Students: Using Artstor Images in Papers

Using Images in Papers

This page outlines how you can use Artstor images in papers, including:

  • Downloading images
  • General information about citing images
  • Citing Artstor images in papers
  • Using Artstor images in publications

How to Cite Images

The Library of Congress provides a great overview of how to cite images and other primary source materials like paintings, photographs, and documents. Visit their site for instructions for using images in papers in Chicago, MLA, and APA format: http://www.loc.gov/teachers/usingprimarysources/citing.html

Your university's librarians are a tremendous resource for learning how to cite images and other sources--reach out to them with further questions!

Citing Artstor Images

All images in Artstor Digital Library are accompanied by metadata--data about the images including things like title, date, and creator--which provides you with the details you need to cite images.

When you view an image in Artstor, the metadata will appear to the right of the image. You can use this information in the correct citation format to cite images for your paper or presentation. 

Artstor works with Zotero, a popular citation manager for Firefox. Read about using Zotero to index Artstor citations on our support site.

Downloading Images

To include an image from Artstor in a paper, first you must download it. In order to download an image from Artstor you need a registered account.

  1. Log in to your account
  2. Open the image you want to download
  3. On the right, click “download”
  4. Images in Artstor download as a minimum 1024 pixels on the longest side of the image.
  5. You can also share a link to an image in Artstor by opening the image and clicking “Link.” The image’s URL will be saved to your clipboard, or you can copy the URL by right clicking.

Using Artstor Images in Publications

If you are looking to use an image you find in Artstor in a publication (a book, scholarly journal article, or thesis/dissertation that will be posted on the open web or otherwise published), you must contact the image owner. It is important to note that Artstor does not own the images in the Digital Library; they are owned by the institutions who graciously contribute them to our database. Contact information is located in the “rights” field in the image’s metadata. In rare instances when the rights field does not provide traceable contact information, please reach out to us at support@artstor.org and we will assist you in finding the image owner.