Art history images essential for teaching art history and art appreciation courses at institutions of higher education are important for universities' stakeholders (students, faculty and staff, local museums, and the neighbouring community). Digital images displayed on the Web sites of universities worldwide are generally made available through digitizing slide collections, subscribing to digital libraries of art history images, making use of faculty's personal images and using university library catalogues. When creating a collection of art history images, Russian universities are severely limited by budget constraints, staff problems and change-management difficulties. But creating a visual resource base can be made possible through launching a volunteer research project with researchers from various university departments. Siberian museums and research centres contributed by studying standards of creating visual information resources, building an art history image database, developing cataloguing tools, and involving students in research projects, as well as doing the practical work of creating an art history image library.