Library Guides: Communications: Find Images

Library Images Resources

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Public Domain Images

Public domain images are images, including photos, clip arts, and vectors, whose copyright has expired or never existed.These images can be used for free by everyone without the need of attributing them, and they can be used for both personal and commercial uses.

Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Online
Images from the Library of Congress collections, now in the public domain.
New York Public Library Digital Collections
Digitized images from the NYPL collections. Select the Search only public domain materials checkbox to limit your search to public domain only images.
British Library on Flickr
The British Library collections of public domain images available on Flickr Commons.
Flickr - The Commons
Project aimed to share images from the world's public photography archives. Participating institutions may rightly claim "no known copyright restrictions" on the content they share.
Getty Open Content Program
The Getty makes available, without charge, all available digital images to which the Getty holds the rights or that are in the public domain to be used for any purpose. No permission is required.
MET Images and Data Resources
On February 7, 2017, The Metropolitan Museum of Art implemented a new policy known as Open Access, which makes images of artworks it believes to be in the public domain widely and freely available for unrestricted use, and at no cost, in accordance with the Creative Commons Zero (CC0).
See the link for more info about searching for and identifying these images.
Pixabay
All images and videos on Pixabay are released free of copyrights under Creative Commons CC0. Unfortunately, it also offers Shutterstock images, which aren't free, but they are clearly set off.
Public Domain Image Resources
Wikipedia maintains a page of online resources for finding public domain images and other content online. The list is a good starting point for an image search.
Public Domain Pictures
This site offers access to free photos. Users have the option to pay the photographer for the image, but this is not required.
Wikimedia Commons
Collection of thousands of freely usable media files.
WorldImages
California State University IMAGE Project including historical images.
Unsplash
A platform powered by the community of users who give free access to hundreds of thousands of their own photos. No need for permission, though attribution is appreciated.

Creative Commons

This video from CreativeCommons.org offers an overview of the Creative Commons licenses:

How to Give Attribution
From the Creative Commons Wiki
Creative Commons Explained Infographic

Creative Commons Images

If you cannot find images in the public domain, you can use Creative Commons licensed materials.

The following sources make finding images under CC licenses quick and easy. They all have advanced search options that limit the results to images with a specific CC license.

"Creative Commons Licenses Infographic" by ricardo56 is licensed under CC BY-SA

Creative Commons Search
The Creative Commons website includes an option to search for Creative Commons content across numerous image platforms, such as Flickr.
CC Search Beta
Search for images with proper CC attribution.
Flickr Creative Commons
Flickr’s Creative Commons portal where you can filter images by license type.
Flickr - The Commons
Project aimed to share images from the world's public photography archives. Participating institutions may rightly claim "no known copyright restrictions" on the content they share.
Behold
Visual search of Flickr photographs. Uses computer vision to recognize visual content, rather than relying on text tags. Limit to “free to use” or “free to modify.
Shared Shelf Commons
Shared Shelf Commons is a free, open-access library of images.
Campfight
Enhanced search of Flickr content. Limit to Creative Commons license for content available to be used.
FlickrStorm
Search Flickr content getting results with related tags. The advanced search option allows to search for a specific Creative Commons license.
PhotoPin
PhotoPin allows you to search for Creative Commons images for blogs and websites. When you download the chosen image, you also get the proper attribution link.
Foter
Foter.com allows you to search, manage and add free stock photos to blogs, forums, websites and other online media. They host millions of free CC images.
Google Images
While not all images on Google Images are Creative Commons licensed, it is possible to limit your search results to only images available under a Creative Commons license. Google does not use the exact same language of Creative Commons, but you can still find reusable images.
Wellcome Collection Image Collection
Image collection by the Wellcome Museum and Library.
Metropolitan Museum of Art Open Access Collection
You can search among more than 300.000 images from the Met collection, available under Creative Commons Zero (CC0) Licence.
Smithsonian Open Access
Over 2,800 000 freely reusable images and data from across the Smithsonian’s 19 museums, nine research centers, libraries, archives, and the National Zoo.

Other Image Resources

FilmGrab
A growing archive of stills from the best films ever. You can browse by directors, film titles, release year, and countries.
TinEye
Reverse image searching website where you can search for images by uploading them or by using their URL.
The Cell: An Image Library
An open-access resource, sponsored by the American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB), with nearly 9,000 multimedia files.
Marburg Picture Index
An open online database of 2.2 million photographs of 1.7 million artworks and architectural objects, owned and operated by the German Documentation Center for Art History.
NYPL digital
Over 800,000 open access images from the New York Public Library holdings.
Climate Visuals
A project by Climate Outreach offering both Creative Commons (CC) and Rights Managed (RM) content. It requires registration to use images.

Communications: Find Images

Library Images Resources

Public Domain Images

Creative Commons

Creative Commons Images

Other Image Resources

Cite and Credit Images in APA