Digital projects let us leverage media in all kinds of interesting ways, and the internet offers us an overwhelming amount of media items to choose from. But when creating digital projects, it’s important to make sure you actually have permission to use that media. Here are some good resources for finding media that’s free to use and how to cite your media sources.

Definitions

  • Public Domain: The public domain describes content that doesn’t have any copyright or licensing restrictions on it. Usually, this is a matter of age, but creators can choose to declare their items public domain, and many governments will also place all of their content in the public domain.
  • Creative Commons: Creative Commons is a suite of licenses that make content free to use with optional restrictions. You’ll often see Creative Commons licenses as a series of abbreviations, like this: CC BY-ND-SA. Here’s what those abbreviations stand for:
    • BY: You can use the content, but only if you include an attribution to the original creator.
    • NC: You can’t sell what you make using the content.
    • ND: You can use it, but you can’t alter it or create derivative works.
    • SA: You must apply the same license to whatever you create with the content that was on the original content itself.
  • Copyright: Copyright is a more restrictive form of licensing and is subject to country-specific laws. While there are exceptions to copyright (see Fair Use below), you should start by looking for free to use content.
  • Open Access: Open access works are, as their name suggests, free to access! But they’re not necessarily free to reuse. They’re still protected by copyright.
  • Fair Use: The doctrine of fair use provides for exceptions to copyright, allowing people to reuse copyrighted works in limited ways. Academic work often falls under fair use, as does parody or satire. But figuring out if fair use applies can be complicated. Check out this guide to fair use to see if your project might qualify.
  • Open Source: Software and data are subject to licensing restrictions, too. Open source describes technical products where the code (the “source”) is open and freely available to reuse. There are a variety of open source licenses, including MIT and Apache.

Places to find free-to-use media

  • New York Public Library Public Domain Images: Images from the NYPL’s digital collections that are free to use, organized by theme
  • Library of Congress Free to Use and Reuse Sets: Items from the Library of Congress’s collections that are free to use, organized by theme
  • OpenVerse: Archive of public domain and creative commons-licensed images and audio
  • BBC Sound Effects: Sound effect audio clips from recordings done on BBC Radio (historic and contemporary); free to use for non-commercial
  • Google Images: Google Images are not all free to use! But you can use the search tools to filter for Creative Commons licenses.
  • Flickr: Likewise, Flickr isn’t always free to use but has filters that can help you find Creative Commons-licensed content