History 402A (Dr. Cawthra): Finding Images Not Restricted by Copyright

Wikimedia Commons is a media file repository of free images (photos, illustrations, maps, etc.), videos, sounds and other multimedia files. Content includes Creative Commons licensed, GNU Free Documentation licensed, or public domain content. Check the Licensing field on each item.

Flickr Commons is a subset of Flickr that provides access to photos free of copyright restrictions from partnering cultural institutions located throughout the world. These images are designated with a "no known copyright restrictions" statement.

Many Flickr users have chosen to offer their work under a Creative Commons license, and you can browse or search through content under each type of license.

The Internet Archive provides free access to millions of digitized books, images (photos, illustrations, cover art, maps, etc.), texts, audio recordings, videos, and software programs from around the world. Check the Rights field on each item record to identify public domain and Creative Commons-licensed works.

The Smithsonian provides open access to more than 2.8 million images, videos, and other digital assets from its collections, which have been released into the public domain under a Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license. Select the Open Access Media checkbox under the Search box to filter on those collections.

The Met in New York City provides open access under Creative Commons Zero (CC0) to more than 375,000 images of artworks from our collection to use, share, and remix—without restriction.

Nearly 20,000 high-quality images of art from their collection have been released into the public domain and are available to download and use as you see fit (that’s about a quarter of all the art represented on the site). Just look for the “download” option beneath the photo of the artwork.

Pixabay is a community of creatives who share copyright free images, videos, and audio files. All content is released under Creative Commons CC0 (public domain), which makes them free to use and modify even for commercial purposes. Attribution is not required.

Online repository for high quality public domain vector graphics on the Internet. All graphics submitted to the project should be waived of all rights, including copyright, according to the CC0 Public Domain Dedication.

This Creative Commons tool searches across more than 300 million images that are openly licensed Creative Commons and public domain works.

HathiTrust is a partnership of academic & research institutions, offering a collection of millions of digitized publications from libraries and archives around the world. It includes many public domain and open access works, which are available to the public. Access to collections still under copyright are restricted to only certain libraries.