A few months ago Google began offering access to an unprecedented collection of photographs available as part of the Google Image search.  Google has partnered with LIFE Magazine to offer the LIFE Photo Archive, a fully searchable database of images from the extensive collection amassed over the years by LIFE Magazine.

According to the Official Google Blog:

“This collection of newly-digitized images includes photos and etchings produced and owned by LIFE dating all the way back to the 1750s.

Only a very small percentage of these images have ever been published. The rest have been sitting in dusty archives in the form of negatives, slides, glass plates, etchings, and prints. We’re digitizing them so that everyone can easily experience these fascinating moments in time. Today about 20 percent of the collection is online; during the next few months, we will be adding the entire LIFE archive — about 10 million photos.”

This incredible visual resource is available for “personal non-commercial use only” providing students a valuable research tool.  Fourth Form students working on their research papers may find inspiration by browsing the image collection for their assigned date range.  Additionally, students researching a particular photographer could search for works by that artist, and students researching specific events could find images related to that event.

Whatever your research needs are, be sure to take time to browse through the LIFE Photo Archive.

Apollo 14 astronauts Alan Shepard & Elgar Mitchell practicing moon landing procedures inside LM simulator, 1970.

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1. Magazine Archive within Google Books
2. Twenty Years After the Fall
3. New Reference Book: Nature and the Environment in 20th-Century American Life