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| Bestiary/Liber de natura bestiarum, England after 1236 BL, Harley 3244, fol. 55v |
The secret, I believe, to engaging people easily with your research is to show them something visual. This instantly helps to link the audience to the past through something tangible. It can often be difficult however to find images to match your research, as the success of your search queries is entirely dependent on how an image has been keyworded. Has the image been keyworded to include the marginalia, or has it purely been keyworded regarding content, or a main image? If you have an image of Adam and Eve, has the pear tree behind them also been included in the search terms?
...and so on, and so forth.
As a result, my new year's gift to you all is a compilation of the websites I use to find images when needed. If you have any that I've missed, please do comment below and I'll update the post.
Firstly, I always start with Google. It has a fairly low success rate if I'm honest and frustratingly, when you do find an image it is often uncited making it academically useless.
After google, Pinterest! Pinterest is wonderful for marginalia as there is an army of fellow medievalist combing the web and they often include the citation in the caption. Thank you pinners <3
Tumblr
Useful but also frustrating as often images aren't keyworded logically, or are uncited.
Gallica
Yes it's in French, but with google translate and a bit of common sense you can navigate the website. Very useful for drawings and maps.
British Library Illuminated Manuscripts
Prime example of the problems with keywords. Only just touches the surface of the images the BL contains.
Morgan Library and Museum
Searchable by keyword and watermark free.
Aberdeen bestiary
If I need an image of animal this is pretty much my first stop everytime.
Getty Images
Hit and miss. Images always watermarked but you can sometimes find your way to an original image through Getty.
http://digital.library.ucla.edu/immi/
Not comprehensive, but useful for simple search terms i.e. "leprosy"
http://guides.nyu.edu/c.php?g=276597&p=1844931
List of different manuscript databases. Not all links work, but there are many listed.
http://guides.library.cornell.edu/c.php?g=31841&p=201679
Another list of manuscript databases.
Scriptorium
Lots of manuscripts catalogued, can't search for images specifically (yet)
http://arthistoryresources.net/ARTHmedieval.html
A little hit and miss, but still quite a few useful links especially for artefacts.
http://www.bl.uk/reshelp/pdfs/Manu_pubs.pdf
Bibliography of books of images ordered by subject i.e. flowers, magic
Bodleian
Leg work needed as you have to open each link individualy and then scan through the accompanying captions. More available here.
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