 As an anthropologist, at some point you will find yourself working on a project that would benefit from the use of photographs. You will generally prefer to take your own photographs, but there are digital collections online that you might find worthwhile. In this video, we will look at three broad categories of digital collections of photographs that might be useful for anthropological research, or for methodological or theoretical discussions regarding visual anthropology. First, we will talk about collections curated specifically for the fields of anthropology or archaeology. Second, exhibitions organized around a particular theme or representing a particular project. Third, collections curated by a corporate organization such as the Archive at the University of Toronto, Mississauga Library, where their collection is intended to document the lives and work of the corporate organization, but these corporate archives can become, if only accidentally, material for your anthropological research. I will post links to all websites mentioned in the description below. Let's start with collections specifically related to anthropology and archaeology. The largest digital collection of ethnographic and archaeological objects is curated by the Division of Anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History. It includes over 250,000 photographs. Keep in mind that this collection is almost entirely composed of photographs of material objects, such as clothing and tools. There are two peculiarities with the browsing and search functionality of this database that I need to highlight immediately. And it is important that you digest these two points if you want to use this database, because it can be quite frustrating otherwise. First, when you conduct keyword searches or browse these object categories, the website is incredibly slow. I'll just click on one of these categories, and I'll talk as we wait. I have tried on multiple computers, including computers that can run big modern video games, and this website is slow. So, you've got to be patient. Once you click on individual images, it is perfectly fine. However, navigating pages is slow. The default images per page is 20. I would absolutely suggest that you keep it set to 20 images. If you set it higher, it slows down the results immensely. Also, I recommend the gallery view rather than the list view, since the gallery view is much faster. Second, if you decide to try browsing and or searching for multiple types of photographs of objects, then you will need to click clear selection or reset every time you start a new search or browse a new topic. If you don't, then the website sort of gets stuck and will keep reporting that it can't show results. In terms of the search functionality, you'll need to keep your search as simple. If the search supports any advanced search features, such as boolean searching or truncation, I am not able to figure out how to make it work. My suspicion is that the search does not support such features. If you add a comma, you can create lists of things to search for, but you will most likely want to do the opposite and narrow your searches, not grow them. I would recommend that you skip the search feature, at least at first. To start, look at the object categories and browse items to get a general sense of the types of images in the database. Once you have a better sense of what you were looking for and the geography that might interest you, then you can combine the search and object categories. You can also use the refined search to narrow your search. When you browse the collection, I found the gallery view to be faster than the list of you, as I mentioned earlier. When you find images that interest you, simply click on them to find out more about the image. You can save images to the portfolio and email the images to yourself, or save them through a number of services linked through the database website. I won't detail them all, but below you will find links to similar sorts of digital collections curated by the Fowler Museum at UCLA, the Museum of Anthropology at UBC, and the Anthropology Archives at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. It is worth mentioning that the photographs at the Smithsonian go beyond material culture and include photographs of people and places. Most of the items at the Smithsonian have not been digitized, so while you will find plenty of photographs, keep in mind that you are only scratching the surface of what the Smithsonian has on site. Also pay attention to any copyright or usage restrictions. These are most clearly detailed when you download the image as a PDF. Let's talk about exhibitions. There are many photographic exhibitions curated by anthropologists online. These are often thematic and specialized. You probably won't use the images from these for your own work, but these images might inspire you or become part of a larger methodological conversation. To start, look at major professional associations and anthropology departments with a formal group working on visual anthropology. Also make sure to look at dates for content postings so you can gauge whether the group continues to be active. The Sensory Ethnography Lab at Harvard University explores a wide area of visual media, including photography, and has created content at least through 2022 and appears to still be active. While you're there looking for ideas, also look at their journal, Sensei. The Granada Center for Visual Anthropology continues to update the showcase section of their website If you use the categories tab on the right hand side, you can filter to the exhibits tagged as photography. Note that most of the photographs have been edited together as videos, so you won't find galleries of photographs. I am listing the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology here because they curate a number of excellent exhibits relevant to visual anthropology using photography along with video. As with the Granada Center, many of the photograph exhibitions are displayed as videos. However, the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology also has a superb digital archive as well. The Advanced Search is a true advanced search that allows boolean searching. You can use the Type field to limit your search to photographs and then add another row for keywords. Alternatively, you can browse all the items. This is really a superb collection with excellent search functionality. I would like to mention visualanthropology.net and Goldsmith's Center for Visual Anthropology. You won't find photographs on either website. However, they are both important for advertising events, calls for papers, and generally acting as hubs for the field of visual anthropology. Lastly, let's talk about corporate archives that are not strictly created for researchers in anthropology but which could contain the photographs for your projects. Our own archives and special collections at the UTM Library is an example. We have large collections of photographs detailing the life of the UTM campus. We also have collections related to the local Peel region. In some cases, finding digital photographic collections may take some research. Just as an example, I would like to point out the United Fruit Company papers held at the UTM Library Archives and Special Collections. It is not immediately obvious why we would have these papers. This story is not important for this video, but the point is that in some cases, you may need to carry out secondary research to locate archives that might contain material for your research and then see if these archives have digitized photographs. Your research is likely to have a precise geographical pinpoint. If that is the case, then consider searching for local history groups, religious organizations, hospitals, any large companies, and in addition, local government, provincial and state government, and of course university archives, all might be potential resources that might have photographs for your visual anthropological research.