We are always on the lookout for good pictures of anywhere in the British Isles and would be happy to hear from you if you want to contribute. We do, however, see an awful lot of very similar material so we will not accept everybody. Do not be offended if you are rejected, it may simply be because you are covering an area we already have in abundance.

We are not an exclusively digital library, but, whatever format the original is, almost all our pictures are now delivered to clients in digital form. We will still look at new submissions of transparencies, but they do involve more work for us and they are unlikely to end up on the web site immediately, they will however be included in searches conducted by our researchers. We do not want all your old transparencies that have been returned by your previous library (unless there is something pretty extraordinary about them!).

Unless we happen to know your work already, we will not take anyone on without first seeing a substantial sample of pictures. These could be a published book and/or original transparencies, of any format, or a CD. I will not be impressed if you give me a link to you work on another commercial library's site, but a link to an online portfolio may be all right, if it is badly designed or the pictures are not good enough to see then we are not likely to persevere. If you are shooting digitally send top quality JPEGs or tiffs at the full size you shot them. Our existing contributors are, of course, welcome to go on submitting work in whatever form they prefer but anyone wishing to make digital submissions should first look at Supplying digital pictures to Collections to verify you are capable of producing work to our specifications. When sending a first sample it would be useful to get some idea of yourself, what you normally do when not shooting stock, your experience, if you might be available for quick speculative jobs in your area (sometimes we are asked for extremely esoteric subjects!), what hardware and software you are using (useful if there are technical problems with submissions) and how much you would be supplying, both as an initial submission and on a continuing basis.

As for the material we require, our stated (if futile) aim is to present the entire British Isles. Already we have astonishingly comprehensive files though there are still areas and subjects sparsely covered. Photographers tend to shoot only the tried and tested - apparently without it occurring to them that every contributor in every other library has covered the same ground. Do something different! They also tend to concentrate on specific buildings or well-known features while ignoring the surrounding town or countryside. We do need the standard things, naturally, but we also need characteristic landscapes, townscapes and cityscapes and, especially, seaside resorts. We have to be careful lest we upset people who have already provided files but the following areas remain a problem: the central counties of Ireland, modern Dublin, the Fens, the Midlands of England, The Welsh Marches, West Wales, long distance footpaths (with walkers), the Borders region of Scotland, the middle of Kent and the south east in general - and new developments in every city and town have to be kept up to date...

If you have a particular interest in some peculiar aspect of British life or landscape, perhaps you have photographed all the lighthouses round the coast, visit battle re-enactments or photograph craftsmen, then we may be interested in that as well, though subjects usually covered by specialist libraries like cars or plant portraits you would probably be better off taking them to specialists.

Unlike some libraries we do not automatically accept every picture from every submission, we only take the pictures that we think will fit in. It is in your interests to do a thorough edit of all your shoots so you don't waste time captioning, keywording or cleaning up pictures we don't then use.