Database Guides
British Cartoon Archive
British Cartoon Archive includes the artwork for more than 150,000 British editorial, socio-political, and pocket cartoons, supported by large collections of comic strips, newspaper cuttings, books and magazines.
This is an open access database but you can only use the images for non-commercial educational use, for example, in essays or academic research.
Finding Images
To search the British Cartoon Archive, you can use the quick search box that you will find on the home page.
Enter keywords and phrases that describe what you are looking for in the search box, and click search. Remember to try different variations of what you are looking for (i.e. scottish instead of scotland, teenager instead of adolescent, etc.).
If the quick search does not give you the results you want, try the advanced search. To access this, click the advanced search link on the left hand side of the page. You will then have a series of different fields and options to search in.
Opening up the refine search criteria options gives you further choices.
Getting the Images
After running a search, you are taken to the results page, where you will see a list of results with some basic information. To explore a result in more detail and see the cartoon, click on the author's name.
You should now see more details, including published date, format, copyright holder etc. The image is located at the bottom of the page. To get a larger version of the
image simply click it.
Copyright
The images within the BCA can only be used for non-commercial education purposes and they must be properly referenced when used.
Please see the details about use within the FAQ section for more information.