When we give permission to publish an image from our collections, we ask that the author include the call number of the item in the credit line. If you have a complete citation, including the call number and item number or page number, you can place a reading room request in order to view the original in the library, or a photoduplication request in order to get a copy of the image.
If your information is partial—you know only the call number for the item, or just the title or author of the original publication or manuscript—you can also use HOLLIS or HOLLIS for Archival Discovery to search for the full citation.
We rely on authors to provide full bibliographical or manuscript citations. If the author has not provided a detailed credit line, you should examine the acknowledgements page, footnotes, and bibliography to try to identify the source of the image in our collections. If you have no citation for the original image, we may happen to recognize it, so it is often worthwhile to send us a copy of the illustration as an e-mail attachment, but we cannot systematically search our extensive collections for uncredited illustrations.