Photography

WEBSITES

In general, we recommend searching CCSF Library resources first, because they contain material that is not freely available on the open web. However, there is lots of material on the open web that is not in the library! Therefore, combining these efforts (searching library resources, and then searching the open web) can be effective.

See below for tips on search strategies for the web to get better results when you use Google and other search engines. And browse some of the recommended websites from museums and photography centers, as well as image databases. There are a lot of great photography collections out there just waiting to be discovered!

Searching for information on the web efficiently requires developing a search strategy. Take your topic and think how you will turn it into search terms. While you can certainly search the web by entering a question, a stronger search strategy would be to choose the most impactful words of your question, and shape it in a way that the search engine understands.

If your research question is "What is the best solution to homelessness in the Bay Area?" the most essential elements to find are solution, homelessness, and the Bay Area. It can help to brainstorm alternatives to the words IN your research question, because different words will surface different results in your search.

Note: the quotation marks around some search terms help tell the search engine that you want results with the words stuck together exactly as you have them.

Combining three of my search concepts, a sample Google search is shown below.