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

Wikimedia Commons is a media file repository making available public domain and freely-licensed educational media content (images, sound and video clips) to everyone, in their own language.

A collection of public domain and other copyright-restriction-free photos contributed by partnering cultural institutions located throughout the world.

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The Internet Archive provides free access to millions of digitized books, texts, audio recordings, videos, and software programs from around the world. This Search guide on their website explains how to find items that are licensed as public domain or Creative Commons, and provides links that activate each search query.

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 vibrant community of creatives, sharing copyright free images and videos. All contents are released under Creative Commons CC0, which makes them safe to use without asking for permission or giving credit to the artist - even for commercial purposes.

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.