Fashion, politics, science - all at your fingertips

This image is among 40,000 from world-famous photo archives, available to teachers in further and higher education through a deal with the Joint Information Systems Committee.

Jisc's Education Image Gallery, hosted at its national Edina datacentre at Edinburgh University, draws on collections such as the Hulton Archive, Photodisc and Getty Images News.

It covers areas from entertainment and fashion to politics and science.

Jisc has paid Getty Images upfront, and is making the images available through subscriptions that range from £250 to £1,600.

Jon Wardle, senior producer in Bournemouth University's Media School, has used Getty images regularly for teaching and for the school's intranet.

Until now, he has had to buy these individually, but Bournemouth now has a £400 institutional licence giving its staff access to the entire collection.

"This will have a huge impact," Mr Wardle said.

"It lets us download anything we want, and use visual images to enhance what we're doing. A virtual learning environment can seem a bit dry with text. This lets us speak through pictures rather than just through text."

Details: The Education Image Gallery is available at http://edina.ac.uk/eig