The Roman Society image library was primarily conceived as a teaching collection and mirrors the formation of similar lantern slide collections in the first half of the twentieth century, including that of the British School of Rome. Lectures were available for loan or purchase with accompanying sets of fifty lantern slides. These “ready-made” lectures were written by experts in the fields of archaeology, history, and architecture, many of them members, faculty, and staff of the BSR (Thomas Ashby, Russell Meiggs, A.H. Smith, Robert Gardner, Eugénie Strong, Hugh Last, George Hallam). Most of the lectures date to the 1920s and 30s. The BSR holds a rare collection of twenty two lectures, one of which contains a nearly complete set of lantern slides (Ostia by Russell Meiggs).

The lectures covered a wide range of topics, including Roman portraiture, Roman daily life, folklore, tours of Sicily and of the Roman Forum, the Via Appia, and excavations in Ostia and in North Africa. Lantern lectures were aimed at broad audiences, though a few were geared toward researchers and advanced students. Specific audiences are sometimes indicated on the title page of the lectures; for example, the lecture "A Walk Round the Roman Forum" is noted as being for beginners. The lecture sets were an integral part of the Roman Society’s mission to make ancient Roman art and scholarship accessible to the public.