Image Resources

This tool enables you to search across several open access collections.

From the site: "The Digital Public Library of America brings together the riches of America’s libraries, archives, and museums, and makes them freely available to the world." On rights: "Except for the Metadata, any images, video and audio delivered through the Exhibitions (the “Visual Assets”), as well as DPLA’s trademarks, logos, trade dress, look and feel, and other identifying characteristics of the Services (collectively, the “DPLA Marks”), all content delivered through the Services is made available and licensed by the DPLA under the CC BY 3.0 License."

From the site: "Our material comes from all over Europe and the scope of the collections is really quite astonishing. Our aim is help you find your way round so you discover treasures of your own." The site includes a patchwork of image rights. Fortunately, it is possible to search by rights.

Your source for almost any kind of image you can imagine. Many are available under Creative Commons Licenses. Flickr lets you search by Creative Commons license type so you needn't waste time on restricted images: http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/.

You must sign up to use this free site, but these stock photos are all free to use without copyright restrictions.

I steer students away from Google Image Search because of the usual problems: clickbait so that you will infect your computer with malware, junk results, and so on. In the past, it was impossible to filter for Creative Commons licenses, but Google now allows that filter (scroll toward the bottom of the screen and select "usage rights"). You are better off using Flickr or Wikimedia Commons directly because Google's best search results are found there anyway.

From the site: "The Illustration Archive transforms research into historic illustrations by providing access to over a million illustrations from 68,000 volumes from the British Library covering ‘literature’, ‘history’, ‘philosophy’ and ‘geography’. " All images in the Illustration Archive are in the Public Domain, so they can be re-used and re-purposed.

WPA Posters. Civil War Photographs. Baseball Cards, World War I. The range of these collections is extraordinary. Unfortunately, the rights can be devilish tricky -- the Library of Congress recommends you make your own assessment: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/about/#rights.

Over 187,000 digital items, visualized here: http://publicdomain.nypl.org/pd-visualization/. From the site: "No permission required. No restrictions on use."

From the site: "The Public Domain Review is a not-for-profit project dedicated to showcasing the most interesting and unusual out-of-copyright works available online."

From the site: "With new platforms and tools, you have easier access to more than 4.4 million 2D and 3D digital items from our collections—with many more to come. This includes images and data from across the Smithsonian’s 19 museums, nine research centers, libraries, archives, and the National Zoo."

From the site: "United States government creative works, including writing, images, and computer code, are usually prepared by officers or employees of the United States government as part of their official duties. A government work is generally not subject to copyright in the United States and there is generally no copyright restriction on reproduction, derivative works, distribution, performance, or display of a government work."

From the Wellcome Library's announcement: "We are delighted to announce that over 100,000 high resolution images including manuscripts, paintings, etchings, early photography and advertisements are now freely available through Wellcome Images ... Drawn from our vast historical holdings, the images are being released under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) licence.

Along with Flickr, the best source for images under Creative Commons licenses. Don't waste your time on Google. Come here.

From the site: "The Smithsonian invites visitors to use its online content for personal, educational and other non-commercial purposes." The Smithsonian does request that you cite the source if you use any of the images.

Research collection of primary sources for study of American art and artists. Although this is a Smithsonian site, note the lowest common denominator rights: "The Smithsonian is the owner of the compilation of content that is posted on the SI Websites, which consists of text, images, audio, video, databases, design, codes and software (“Content”). However, the Smithsonian does not necessarily own each component of the compilation ... The Smithsonian welcomes you to make fair use of the Content as defined by copyright law." http://www.si.edu/termsofuse/

A well maintained collection of links to Art History resources on the web. Look for Terms of Use at the resources themselves.

Find art and architecture images. Although this resource is "dedicated to the principle of free exchange of image resources for and among members of the educational community," the resource does restrict creative re-use. http://quod.lib.umich.edu/a/aict?page=license

A continuously growing archive of primary and secondary materials covering contemporary art movements across Asia. This resource can be laggy and difficult to navigate, but there are definitely some treasures to be found -- note that Terms of Use are explicitly noted with each image, but re-use is restricted.

From the site: "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." http://www.getty.edu/legal/copyright.html#oc

From the news release: "...all images of public-domain artworks in the Museum's collection are now available for free and unrestricted use. This updated policy, known as Open Access, utilizes the Creative Commons Zero (CC0) designation."

I draw attention to this collection specifically for its interest to students of drawing. For other purposes, I do not see any special permissions or restrictions, so would presume educational fair use applies.

This website provides access to a variety of world-wide collections. This site does a good job of explicitly noting terms of use for each image, but unfortunately, vads relies on restrictive terms: http://www.vads.ac.uk/common_access_agreement.html

From the British Library's blog announcement: "We have released over a million images onto Flickr Commons for anyone to use, remix and repurpose. These images were taken from the pages of 17th, 18th and 19th century books digitised by Microsoft who then generously gifted the scanned images to us, allowing us to release them back into the Public Domain."

The Internet Archive has uploaded millions of public domain images to Flickr resulting from massive book digitization projects. Simply an awesome resource.

From the site: "accessCeramics is a growing collection of images of contemporary ceramics by recognized artists. It is designed for use by artists, arts educators, scholars and the general public, and is intended to fill a void in contemporary ceramics digital image collections on the web." The images are Creative Commons licensed.

Great resource for PUBLIC DOMAIN comic books, mainly from the Golden Age.

From the site: "We are the best site for downloading FREE public domain Golden Age Comics. All files here have been researched by our staff and users to make sure they are copyright free and in the public domain. To start downloading just register an account and enjoy these great comic books. We do not charge per download and the goal of the project is to archive these comic books online and make them widely available."

From the site: "The Pulp Magazines Project is an open-access archive and digital research initiative for the study and preservation of one of the twentieth century's most influential print culture forms: the all-fiction pulpwood magazine. The Project also provides information and resources on publishing history, multiple search and discovery platforms, and an expanding library of high-quality, cover-to-cover digital facsimiles."

From the site: "Chronicling America is a Website providing access to information about historic newspapers and select digitized newspaper pages ..." Unfortunately, the Library of Congress limits one's rights to otherwise public domain resources here: "The Library of Congress is providing access to bibliographic information and newspaper pages digitized under the National Digital Newspaper Program for noncommercial, educational and research purposes."

From the site: "We are a non-profit initiative dedicated to digitizing collections of classic media periodicals that belong in the public domain for full public access. The project is supported by owners of materials who loan them for scanning, and donors who contribute funds to cover the cost of scanning. We have currently scanned over 1.3 million pages, and that number is growing."

A privately digitized collection of old magazines. The proprietor of this website *thinks* these resources are in the public domain and offers them for re-use: "To the best of our understanding, all the content is in the public domain and you need never ask our permission should you wish to use any of the articles for publication; we do ask as a courtesy, however, that you provide this simple credit: 'This article was provided by OldMagazineArticles.com'."

" Images may be downloaded and used following Creative Commons CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 license. Image credit should be given to "David Rumsey Map Collection, David Rumsey Map Center, Stanford Libraries." Please contact the David Rumsey Map Collection for commercial use. https://www.davidrumsey.com/about/copyright-and-permissions"

A good source for public domain maps: "USGS-authored or produced data and information are considered to be in the U.S. public domain. While the content of most USGS Web pages is in the U.S. public domain, not all information, illustrations, or photographs on our site are. Some non USGS photographs, images, and/or graphics that appear on USGS Web sites are used by the USGS with permission from the copyright holder. These materials are generally marked as being copyrighted."

This resource bills itself as "an easy-to-use gateway to historical maps in libraries around the world." The site is useful for viewing maps in multiple locations, and also as a link list to other map collections. However, Old Maps Online is itself highly restrictive (probably because it must provide the lowest common denominator of use rights to all of those collections), so you are better off jumping from this site to another map resource. See the terms of use: http://project.oldmapsonline.org/terms

DVIDS is the Defense Video and Imagery Distribution System. The interface is pretty bad, but this is a fairly unique source for current military images in the public domain. See rights: https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright#.VgA9l99VhBc.

This source of military images does not appear to be very savvy about the usage of Creative Commons licenses. There are several warnings here about the protection of copyright, but for this type of imagery, this site is a good source.

Many of the resources here will be public domain, but you need to look out for your rights.

This link list might prove useful in a post card search, but is not vetted. Please look out for your rights!

Images of Outer Space. Note that copyright is not being asserted on the images here in most cases.

Images of Outer Space and the tools to get there. Unless otherwise noted, NASA does not assert copyright (http://www.nasa.gov/audience/formedia/features/MP_Photo_Guidelines.html#.UwJg8rTYPts).

From the site: "Archnet is a globally-accessible, intellectual resource focused on architecture, urbanism, environmental and landscape design, visual culture, and conservation issues related to the Muslim world." Scholarly use is allowed, but not creative use. See the terms: http://archnet.org/pages/terms. See, for example, the Mediterranean Postcards Collection: http://archnet.org/collections/24.

From the site: "The Public Domain Review is a not-for-profit project dedicated to showcasing the most interesting and unusual out-of-copyright works available online."

This website provides access to a variety of world-wide collections. This site does a good job of explicitly noting terms of use for each image, but unfortunately, vads relies on restrictive terms: http://www.vads.ac.uk/common_access_agreement.html

From the Wellcome Library's announcement: "We are delighted to announce that over 100,000 high resolution images including manuscripts, paintings, etchings, early photography and advertisements are now freely available through Wellcome Images ... Drawn from our vast historical holdings, the images are being released under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) licence.