Picture Libraries - What is required
If you love photography and photo imaging in all its forms, then working in a Picture Library could be your dream career.
The term Picture Library is often used to describe two different types of organisation, a Picture Library and a Picture Agency.
A Picture Library cares for and manages a specialised collection of images belonging to an organisation. The Picture Library may form a photographic image resource within a museum or public gallery, it may represent a body of images wholly owned by a publication, broadcaster or picture agency, it may represent the visual archive of a government agency, local authority, university, charity, professional body or large corporation: or it may be in the form a discrete private library, for example the historic images from a now defunct organisation or publication or belonging to a family or private art collection.
In addition to preserving the pictures in its collection, the Picture Library usually makes these images available to other organisations for a fee or with other copyright conditions attached. Picture Libraries can hold anything from a few hundred to many thousands or even millions of images. They may contain the work of a single individual photographer or that of many photographers and artists. Smaller libraries often specialise in a particular subject matter or the work of particular photographers.
A Picture Agency does not own many - or sometimes any - of the pictures it licences. Instead, a Picture Agency negotiates reseller agreements with Picture Libraries and other Picture Agencies and provides a picture-searching service to help its clients from the worlds of advertising, design and publishing find and license the images they need.
Both Picture Libraries and Picture Agencies seek to make it as quick and easy as possible for people and organisations to find and licence the images, whether it be the photograph of a famous person or event, the work of a specific photographer, or a specific type of image required for an advertising campaign. Picture Libraries are an important source of image supply and many photographers make a large proportion of their income from sales to Libraries and through Agencies.
Picture Libraries vary in size from two or three people to large organisations; while others operate as part of a larger organisation, such as a museum, corporation or charitable foundation. Pay rates in this sector vary widely and staff may be employed on a full or part-time basis.
There are four main areas of activity in a Picture Library: archiving, cataloguing, researching and digital imaging - as well as the management and marketing of the images to clients in advertising, design, publishing, broadcasting and webcasting.
Traditionally this business was conducted using traditional photographic media (film and prints), which were catalogued and stored in much the same way as a public library.
Today, however, most images are now originated as digital images or scanned for storage on a computer database. In some Picture Libraries the process of scanning the existing image stock may still form a significant part of their activities. Whereas in the past staff could formerly specialise in one activity, they are now often expected to be all-rounders capable of carrying out a variety of tasks - and with a much greater focus on image sales and commercialisation.
We have developed the following Job Profiles but these may well overlap depending on the size of the oragisation involved:
Digital Imaging Specialist
Picture Researcher
Picture Library Assistant/Keyworder/Image Scanner
Picture Library Manager/Head of Image Resources
Image Sales Executive
Business Development Manager
