How to Find Public Domain & Creative Commons Media

Flickr maintains The Commons, which offers access to images no known copyright restrictions from over 70 institutions ranging from NASA to the National Library of Sweden. In almost all cases, the images have already entered the Public Domain for one reason or another. Users can limit their image searches to a specific institution by navigating to an institution's photostream and then selecting that option from the dropdown options that appear as the user types a search into the search box.

The Getty's Open Content Program to shares "images of works of art in an unrestricted manner, freely, so that all those who create or appreciate art…will have greater access to high-quality digital images for their studies and projects." You can find these images by conducting a search on the Getty Search Gateway and then filtering your results by checking the box next to "Open Content Images", which is the second option in the Highlights section of the filters in the left menu. All images found through this program should be credited as "Digital image courtesy of the Getty's Open Content Program" (see http://www.getty.edu/about/opencontent.html).

The Met uses a CC0 license for works that it believes are in the public domain.

NASA's website offers access to many of their images, audio files, videos and other media, which are generally not copyrighted and freely available for use.

More than 45,000 images in the public domain.

As government images, almost all of the images in this collection are in the public domain, though the website states that you must credit NOAA if you use one of their images. They especially encourage educational use.

A site that provides free, public domain images that don't even require attribution. Unfortunately, it also offers Shutterstock images, which aren't free, but they are clearly set off so I don't think users will find that too confusing. The search feature is particularly nice, supporting Boolean connectors and also the ability to search by predominant color of the image.

Wikipedia maintains a page of online resources for finding public domain images and other content online. While not all of the sites include exclusively public domain images, this list is a good place to start looking for content, particularly if you are looking for more specialized items.

This resource curates a collection of images, books, films and audio files that are available in the public domain. The collection can be browsed by medium, time period, tag and source. Once you are in a collection, you can also sort by the type of public domain rights that apply to the items (for example, whether it is in the public domain everywhere in the world).

Images on the Rijksmuseum website are fully searchable and downloadable. Each item that has entered the public domain includes this information in the section of the item description entitled acquisition and rights.

This digital exhibition by the British Library and the Japan Center for Asian Historical Records (JACAR) includes images of 235 prints held by the British Library which have been released into the public domain. Available in both English and Japanese.

The United States Department of Agriculture maintains a database of images pertaining to their work and areas of purview. Because the images were mostly taken for the government, virtually all are in the public domain. Any images that are not in the public domain are marked as such.

The Yale University Art Gallery has stated that, pursuant to the University's Open Access policy, "anyone may use the Gallery’s open-access material without further application, authorization, or fees due to the Gallery or to Yale." Unfortunately, at this time, there is no way to limit search results to only items that are in the public domain, however, when you click on an item, the entry will state whether the image is in the public domain (see image). You can find more information on properly attributing images on the Art Gallery's Terms of Use page.

Compfight shows both commercial and Creative Commons images, but it sets off the non-Creative Commons images in a separate section to make the distinction clear. Once you have run a search, you also have various facets in the left menu that can help you narrow your results by license type (along with other features of the image)

The Creative Commons website includes an option to search for Creative Commons content across numerous sources, including Flickr, Google and Wikimedia Commons among many others.

Europeana is an online collection of content from European libraries, archives, museums and other institutions. Once you run a search in their search bar, you can limit your results to items that are freely usable or available under a Creative Commons license using the facets under Copyright in the left menu.

This section of Flickr offers images that are available under a Creative Commons license and also explains the different types of Creative Commons licenses. You can also search for Creative Commons-licensed images on Flickr by going to the advanced search link in the upper right hand corner of the page and checking the appropriate boxes in the Creative Commons section at the bottom of the advanced search page.

As of August 2014, the Folger Shakespeare Library has licensed all of its images in the Digital Image Library under a CC BY-SA license.

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. To do so, run your search in the standard Google Image search bar and then on the results page, click on search tools just below the search box. A further drop down menu will then appear with usage rights as one of the options. From there, users can limit results to the proper rights. Unfortunately, they do not use the exact language of Creative Commons licenses, but you can nevertheless use the service to find usable images.

Available in both English and Korean, this is another option for finding Creative Commons-licensed content.

This tool from TinEye allows you to search for Creative Commons-licensed images by color. Users can enter up to five colors simultaneously and will return dozens of images that include all of the selected colors. Images are pulled from Flickr.

Clip art images shared with a CC0 license.

This image search engine returns both Creative Commons and non-Creative Commons images. When you download any image, you can also download the necessary HTML to appropriately attribute the image to its creator.

This site offers fully searchable access to media, including images, sounds and videos, that has been uploaded by users, mostly for use on Wikipedia. Most of the content is available under some sort of Creative Commons license and licensing information is clearly provided at the bottom of each piece of media's individual page.