Subject and Course Guides: Public Relations: Images & Copyright

Image Databases

pixabay
Download royalty free photos and videos and share your own pictures as public domain with people all over the world
Digital Public Library of America
DPLA connects people to the riches held within America’s libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural heritage institutions. All of the materials found through DPLA—photographs, books, maps, news footage, oral histories, personal letters, museum objects, artwork, government documents, and so much more—are free and immediately available in digital format.

ARTstor This link opens in a new window
The ARTstor website content has been migrated to the JSTOR platform, as the ARTstor website retired on August 1, 2024.
A digital library of almost two million images in the arts, architecture, humanities, and social sciences, encompassing artistic and historical traditions across many time periods and cultures.
ARTstor is a nonprofit, digital library comprised of almost two million images in the arts, architecture, humanities, and social sciences from outstanding museums, photographers, libraries, scholars, photo archives, and artists and artists' estates. The database encompasses artistic and historical traditions across many time periods and cultures, including architecture, painting, sculpture, photography, decorative arts, and design, as well as many other forms of visual culture. It is designed to be used by art historians, as well as researchers in fields that do not traditionally use images. The database can be searched by keyword, or, through the advanced search, by creator, title, location, repository, subject, material, style or period, work type, culture, description, technique, and/or number. A suite of software tools also allow users to view, present, and manage images for research and pedagogical purposes. Updated regularly.
Oxford Art Online This link opens in a new window
Brings together Grove Art Online and other Oxford art resources so that entries and images can be searched in one location. NOTE: Only 5 simultaneous users allowed.
Oxford Art Online is a gateway to Oxford art resources allowing users to search and browse the extensive collection of entries and images all in one location. Oxford Art Online includes the following: Grove Art Online a scholarly art encyclopedia covering all aspects of Western and non-western visual art. The Oxford Companion to Western Art contains articles on topics of contemporary interest, including art movements, theory, and criticism. The Encyclopedia of Aesthetics which surveys the full breadth of critical thought on art, culture, and society. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art Terms provides 1,800 entries on art terms, critical periods, and styles in the visual arts.

NOTE: Only 5 simultaneous users allowed.
NYPL Digital Gallery This link opens in a new window
Provides access to numerous digital images from the collections of the New York Public Library.
NYPL Digital Gallery provides access to over 600,000 images digitized from primary sources and printed rarities in the collections of The New York Public Library, including illuminated manuscripts, historical maps, vintage posters, rare prints and photographs, illustrated books, printed ephemera, and more.

Creative Commons

Creative Commons.Org (a group of intellectual property experts – lawyers and librarians) created a set of copyright licenses free for public use that define the “middle way” between copyright and the public domain – or between all rights reserved and no rights reserved.

Creative Commons have defined a set of licenses so that authors and artists can clearly define what rights they are keeping, and what they are sharing – for free or for fee.

These Creative Commons licenses, six variations in total, allow for creators to keep their copyright while inviting other uses of their work – or a “some rights reserved” copyright.

Using these creative commons licenses, creators can choose a set of conditions they wish to apply to their work.The basic four conditions are:

a person Attribution : You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your copyrighted work — and derivative works based upon it — but only if they give credit the way you request.

Dollar sign crossed out Noncommercial : You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your work — and derivative works based upon it — but for noncommercial purposes only.

an equals sign No Derivative Works : You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform only verbatim copies of your work, not derivative works based upon it.

symbol Share Alike : You allow others to distribute derivative works only under a license identical to the license that governs your work.

These conditions can be combined to produce six licenses (all licenses include attribution):

Attribution
Attribution – Share Alike
Attribution – Non Commercial
Attribution – No Derivatives
Attribution – Share Alike – Non Commercial
Attribution – Non Commercial – No Derivatives

Your license choice will be expressed in three ways:

Commons Deed. A plain-language summary of the license, complete with the relevant icons.
Legal Code. The fine print that you need to be sure the license will stand up in court.
Digital Code. A machine-readable translation of the license that helps search engines and other applications identify your work by its terms of use.

Go to http://creativecommons.org for more information.

For open source music: http://ccmixter.org

For open source images: http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons

*Adapted from the Creative Commons website (creativecommons.org)

Choose a Creative Commons License

More on Copyright & Creative Commons

Creative Commons (CC)
Locate all sorts of materials licensed under Creative Commons. These are much easier to use, because terms of use are laid out for you! Explore the different kinds of licenses – the most flexible ones are those that do not include the “ND”, or No Derivatives, clause.
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CC provides free tools that let authors, scientists, artists, and educators easily mark their creative work with the freedoms they want it to carry. You can use CC to change your copyright terms from "All Rights Reserved" to "Some Rights Reserved."
Flickr Advanced Search
Advanced search in Flickr gives you the option to ONLY search within Creative Commons-licensed content
ccMixter
ccMixter is a community music site featuring remixes licensed under Creative Commons where you can listen to, sample, mash-up, or interact with music in whatever way you want.
Google Images
In the “Advanced Search”, you can limit your search results to images “available for reuse.” Be careful – just as Google Scholar’s metadata is suspect, so is its ability to eliminate copyrighted images. Look for additional confirmation that the image you plan on using is truly free of copyright restrictions.
Jamendo
Jamendo is a community of free, legal and unlimited music published under Creative Commons licenses.
Share your music, download your favorite artists!
The Power of Open
Creative Commons created the legal and technical infrastructure that allows effective sharing of knowledge, art and data by individuals, organizations and governments. More importantly, millions of creators took advantage of that infrastructure to share work that enriches the global commons for all humanity. The Power of Open collects the stories of those creators.
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Download PDF http://thepowerofopen.org/downloads/
Creative Commons images and you: a quick guide for image users