Britannica's Image Quest opens one million rights-cleared digital images from top global picture libraries to education

For the first time ever, educational institutions and public libraries have access to more than one million digital images from more than 40 of the best global picture libraries, with Image Quest from Encyclopaedia Britannica (www.quest.eb.com). End Quote

(1888PressRelease) February 11, 2011 - Fully rights-cleared for educational use, Image Quest brings together collections from Dorling Kindersley Images, Getty Images, the National Portrait Gallery of London, De Agostini Editore, the Natural History Museum, the National Geographic Society, Oxford Scientific, the Wellcome Institute and many other leading names, into an easy-to-use online portal.

Fully interoperable with any Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) or Learning Platform, Image Quest provides staff and students with quick, easy and safe access to the highest quality images from around the world. Teachers can use the images in their lesson plans and classroom activities and in projects such as the school website, newsletters, flyers, or bulletins. Students can use them to enhance homework assignments, school or course projects, university research and dissertations. Rights-cleared for educational use, the resource also removes the time and costs associated with seeking reproduction rights or checking over students' work to ensure they sought permission.

Students now use the web as a prime source of information, although much of the imagery they find will be irrelevant or of such low resolution that it cannot be reproduced to the required quality. Organised by subject matter and fully searchable, Image Quest eliminates time wasted searching through irrelevant sites and resources. Free of advertising and from trustworthy sources, the resource contains images that are not freely available on the internet.

The high-quality images are tagged with relevant keywords so users can quickly access a wide range of additional relevant imagery to support their work. Each photo or illustration also comes with complete metadata, including the source, the copyright holder, caption, and keywords, automatically inserting the proper citation information with each image used in a paper or project. Users can download, print and save images in a 'Virtual Lightbox' and share and e-mail them in a multitude of formats.

Ian Grant, Managing Director of Encyclopaedia Britannica UK, comments: "What makes Image Quest unique is the way image collections from around the world have been brought together by Universal Images Group to create an essential repository of photos and illustrations entirely rights-cleared for education. Where in the past students and educators would need to research, request and even travel to specialist institutions to access resources, Image Quest brings them all together in an online portal available anytime, anywhere over the internet. The ability to use Image Quest alongside the trusted resources from Britannica means the teaching and learning possibilities are enormous."
Image Quest is published in association with Universal Images Group (www.UniversalImagesGroup.com).

A free 30-day trial is available. Institutional pricing for Image Quest, dependent on size and type of institution, is available from Britannica. For further information, please visit the web site at www.britannica.co.uk.

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