LibGuides: History 506 (Spring 2021): Finding Digital Media Not Restricted by Copyright

About this Page

The media repositories listed on this page include a variety of digital media that is available to use for free. This includes public domain works, Creative Commons-licensed works, and other freely available media. History 506 students might want to consult the "Recommended Repositories" page in this guide for a list of digital media repositories hand-selected as particularly relevant for that course.

Rights-Free or Rights-Implied Image Repositories

Where to find Creative Commons, Public Domain, and other "rights free" or "rights-implied" images.

Wikimedia Commons
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.
Flickr Commons
A collection of public domain and other copyright-restriction-free photos contributed by partnering cultural institutions located throughout the world.
Flickr Creative Commons
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.
Internet Archive
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.
Smithsonian Open Access
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 Metropolitan Museum of Art: Open Access 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.
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
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.
more...less...
If you want to see all of the public domain artworks in the collection, run a search and then select “Show only unrestricted images” at the top of the page.
Pixabay
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.
Open Clip Art Library
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.
Creative Commons Image Search Tool
This Creative Commons tool searches across more than 300 million images that are openly licensed Creative Commons and public domain works.

Rights-Free or Rights-Implied Video Repositories

Where to find Creative Commons, Public Domain, and other "rights free" videos.

Internet Archive
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.
Vimeo Creative Commons Licenced Videos
Browse the Creative Commons licensed videos on Vimeo. Learn about what you can and can't do with other people’s videos on Vimeo to help you share, rework and reuse legally.
YouTube Creative Commons-Licensed Videos
Use YouTube's advanced Filtered Search feature to find Creative Commons-licensed videos on YouTube.

Rights-Free or Rights-Implied Audio Repositories

Where to find Creative Commons, Public Domain, and other "rights free" or "rights-light" audio material.

Community Audio
Part of the internet Archive, this site contains thousands of community-contributed Creative Commons licensed audio recordings. Item are free to use, per each specified Creative Commons license.
Internet Archive
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.
Pixabay
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.
SoundCloud
SoundCloud is the world’s leading social sound platform where anyone can create sounds and share them everywhere. SoundClouds' dedicated Creative Commons page allows you to find tracks that you can use for free according to the terms provided in the license.
YouTube Audio Library
YouTube provides a library of over 150 royalty-free instrumental tracks that can be added to your YouTube videos as background music.

Rights-Free or Rights-Implied Repositories for Ebooks & Other Text Content

Where to find Creative Commons, Public Domain, and other "rights free" ebooks.

HathiTrust
HathiTrust is a partnership of academic & research institutions, offering a collection of millions of titles digitized from libraries around the world. It includes many public domain and open access works. Please consult the "Access and Use" statement included in the PageTurner view for each item (in the sidebar to the left of the viewing area, next to the "Copyright" heading), for volume-specific information. You need to make your own assessment of the copyright or other legal concerns related to uses beyond those provided by HathiTrust for particular works.
Internet Archive
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.
Project Gutenberg
Founded in 1971, Project Gutenbergwas the first single collection of free ebooks, with over 40,000 titles. Nearly all of Project Gutenberg's eBooks are in the public domain in the United States. For the rest, copyright permission has been granted by the copyright owner.

History 506 (Spring 2021)

About this Page

Rights-Free or Rights-Implied Image Repositories

Rights-Free or Rights-Implied Video Repositories

Rights-Free or Rights-Implied Audio Repositories

Rights-Free or Rights-Implied Repositories for Ebooks & Other Text Content

Web Accessibility