Image Searching

Metadata

Librarians can teach patrons about image searching.

Image searching differs from full-text search because it depends on metadata. Metadata is information about the image assigned by people.

Image Search Engines

Image databases handle metadata differently. ARTstor and Bridgeman catalog images using standard criteria. Flickr uses a folksonomy, where users can tag pictures however they want.

There are also more experimental image search engines. Retrievr lets you sketch something and then finds an image similar to your doodle. Google lets you search by the predominant color!