A source for free government photos and images

Looking for photographs or images to use that are in the public domain? Start your search at usa.gov with U.S. Government Photos and Images. It includes many images that are in the public domain and can be freely used and that are broken down by topic. See the link here.

(Original article discussing freely available government images ran in Spring /11 Documents to the People by Rebecca Hyde and Lucia Orlando; issue is available here.)

Historical Map Collection Now Online

From a recent email from the USGS coordinator:

"Nearly 90,000 high resolution scans of the more than 200,000 historical
USGS topographic maps, some dating as far back as 1884, are now available
on-line from the US Geological Survey. The Historical Topographic Map
Collection includes published U.S. topographic maps of all scales and
editions, and are offered as a georeferenced digital download or as a
printed copy from the USGS Store....

Historical maps are an important national resource as they provide the
long-term record and documentation of the natural, physical and cultural
landscape. The history documented by this collection and the analysis of
distribution and spatial patterns is invaluable throughout the sciences
and non-science disciplines. Genealogists, historians, anthropologists,
archeologists and others use this collection for research as well as for a
framework on which a myriad of information can be presented in relation to
the landscape. For more than 130 years, the USGS topographic mapping
program has accurately portrayed the complex geography of our nation
through maps using the lithographic printing process. The historical
collection contains high resolution scanned images from the USGS legacy
series and other sources...."

Check out the collection here.