Have you any images (photos, digital images or slides) that you think may be useful to academic colleagues in their teaching?
The English Subject Centre is building ImageLink, a freely available online resource holding images contributed by academics, research organisations, libraries etc. Users will be able to download images free of charge for educational use as long as there is appropriate acknowledgement given.
Contributions are invited from all in the subject community as well as related institutions and organisations. The aim is to facilitate sharing of images relevant to English teaching, and to relieve individuals of the burden of maintaining small personal collections. In time, the database will hold a variety of images that cover the breadth of English in terms of literary periods, authors and genres.
Finding the Right Taxonomy
We want users of ImageLink to be able to find images to fit a specific need, or to simply browse broad categories. Splitting English as a subject into categories is no easy task, but some of the broad categories that are under consideration are based around periods and keywords.
We welcome suggestions from anyone who has undertaken a similar classification exercise.
Copyright matters
The plan is for copyright of images to remain at all times with the contributor of the image. Contributors will sign a Letter of Agreement with the English Subject Centre to confirm that the images are theirs to contribute and that no third party (other than the contributors employer) holds copyright to the images. Users of the image will be required to acknowledge the contributor and the database when using an image.
The Next Step
The Subject Centre would like to hear from anyone interested in providing material for the ImageLink database:
- 35mm photographs
- Digital photographs
- High resolution scanned images (preferably in TIFF or Hi quality JPEG format)
- On or offline collections
- 35mm Slides
- Documents
- Magazines
- Archives of manuscripts
Currently we have an open collection policy and are interested in any material of potential use in the teaching of English. We would be happy to scan individual photographs submitted by post or to arrange for scanning of larger collections if or when that may be appropriate.
Digital images can be forwarded by email (esc@rhul.ac.uk) or be submitted by post on a CD or zip disk in any format (e.g. TIFF, JPEG) .
Images and Teaching
We would also like to know what kind of images you use in your teaching, how you currently acquire them and whether you find it difficult to locate the ones you want. Are there any images you would like to access to but cant? One way of exploring this could be for The English Subject Centre to make some links on the communitys behalf with key image producing organizations to make access to these visual resources more widely available.
Get in touch
If you would like to assist us in the development of this resource:
by submitting images by telling us about your experiences of using, scanning and incorporating images in your teaching by involvement in the user testing phase of the ImageLink website by contributing ideas about the ongoing development of this resource
Please: join the Messageboard or contact us through our online feedback form or contact the Website Developer Brett Lucas (brett.lucas@rhul.ac.uk).
