e-learning

Creative Commons Image Search

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When incorporating images into your lecture notes and presentations it is important to be aware of what is and is not allowed under copyright law. Unless the owner of the image has explicitly granted permission for educational use (e.g. "Permission granted to reproduce for personal and educational use only. Commercial copying, hiring, lending is prohibited.") then use of their image is a breach of copyright law.

When designing teaching materials it is a good idea to make sure that all images are used in compliance with copyright law. Fortunately many sites, like flickr, or picasa provide clear copyright guidance as to what can and cannot be used.

The above search box can be used to find images on flickr that have been licensed under a Creative Commons copyright licence that permits their use as long as you comply with certain basic terms and conditions (see below).

Creative Commons Terms and Conditions

After finding an image you like with the above search, take a quick look at the License (flickr) or Photo reuse (picasa) information on the same page. This will inform you how to use the image and be in compliance with copyright T&C. Generally this advice is in the form of simple images that describe the permissions granted and obligations expected of you.

You are free to use and ...

Share - to copy, distribute and transmit the work
Remix - to adapt the work

As long as you...

Attribution - You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Identifying the name of the image's owner with a link to the image on flickr is generally sufficient.
Noncommercial - You may not use this work for commercial purposes. use of images within your lecture notes for teaching purposes is not commercial use, so can be in compliance with this condition. Note that if you ever want to commercialise your notes (sell them to a publisher) you may need to remove images that have a noncommercial clause in their licence.
No Derivative Works - You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work. Unless you plan on editing the image, this is an easy condition to comply with.
Share Alike - If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one.

Creative copyrighted work will consist of a sub-set of the above permissions and obligations rather than all of the above. For example 'no derivative works' and 'share alike' are contradictory and are not applied to the same work.

Other Sources of Creative Commons Multimedia

Audio

  • http://artistserver.com/
    • ArtistServer is a social music site with a focus on independent artists and bands. They currently list over 7,000 CC licenced music files.
  • http://ccmixter.org/
    • ccMixter is a community music site featuring remixes licensed under CC where you can listen to, sample, mash-up, or interact with music in whatever way you want.
  • http://free-loops.com/
    • Free-Loops.com provides CC licenced loops and audio clip downloads to the music production community.
  • http://www.freesound.org/
    • The Freesound Project is a collaborative database of CC licenced sounds. Freesound focusses only on sound, not songs
  • http://www.jamendo.com/en/
    • Jamendo is a community of free, legal and unlimited music published under Creative Commons licenses. Share your music, download your favorite artists! JamendoPRO is an online platform offering the world's largest free music catalog available for commercial use.
  • http://www.soundclick.com/
    • SoundClick continues to be the leading free music community featuring signed and unsigned bands plus state of the art social media tools.
  • http://www.tribeofnoise.com/
    • A social networking site built around independent artists uploading their music under a Creative Commons 3.0 by-share alike license.

General

  • http://www.archive.org/index.php
    • The Internet Archive is building a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form. Like a paper library, they provide free access to researchers, historians, scholars, and the general public.
  • http://search.creativecommons.org/
    • search.creativecommons.org is not a search engine, instead it provides convenient access to search services provided by other independent organisations.
  • http://www.freebase.com/signin/
    • Freebase is an open, Creative Commons licensed repository of structured data of more than 12 million entities. An entity is a single person, place, or thing. Freebase connects entities together as a graph.
  • http://www.google.com/advanced_search
    • The advanced search options of the Google search engine allow you to filter for CC licenced results.
  • http://www.spinxpress.com/getmedia
    • Another search engine that enables independent producers to pull from a wide range of creative content available under Creative Commons licenses. To help you find exactly what you are looking for you can select the exact license, media type and source.
  • http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
    • 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. It acts as a common repository for the various projects of the Wikimedia Foundation
  • http://search.yahoo.com/cc
    • This Yahoo! Search service finds content across the Web that has a Creative Commons licence.

Images

  • http://animalphotos.info/a/
    • A site dedicated to CC licenced animal images.
  • http://carpictures.cc/cars/photo/
    • A site dedicated to CC licenced car images
  • http://www.compfight.com/
    • A flickr image search engine that allows filtering via a variety of criteria.
  • http://creativity103.com/
    • Cr103 is a library of CC licenced abstract backgrounds, textures and design ideas you can cut and paste them into your own work or use just for insipiration.
  • http://flickr.com/creativecommons/
    • Flickr'sown search engine that filters for CC licenced images.
  • http://www.geograph.org.uk/
    • The Geograph Britain and Ireland project aims to collect geographically representative photographs and information for every square kilometre of Great Britain and Ireland and release them under CC licences.
  • http://openclipart.org/
    • The Open Clipart project aims to create an archive of clip art that can be used for free for any use.
  • http://photoeverywhere.co.uk/
    • This site currently has more than 3000 photographs taken around the world. All images have been made available free of charge under a creative commons license - see each image page for details.
  • http://en.sevenload.com/
    • Sevenload.com is a site hosting a variety of different media. The images section contains clearly marked CC licenced photographs.
  • http://www.wikihow.com/Main-Page
    • wikiHow is a collaborative effort to build and share the world's largest, highest quality how-to manual. This contains a huge collection of CC licenced images.

Text

  • http://www.intratext.com/
    • The IntraText library contains over 12 millions texts dating back as far as 900 B.C., and as recent as the 21st century. Many are licensed under the CC Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
  • http://www.travellerspoint.com/
    • This site features over 1,500 CC licenced text documents providing travel advice about destinations from all over the world.
  • http://www.unearthtravel.com/
    • A free, editable travel guide. All information is published under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 1.0 Licence so it is free to use and update.
  • http://www.wisdomcommons.org/
    • A collection of over 3,000 CC licenced quotes, proverbs, meditations, poems, stories, and essays from many traditions.

Video

  • http://blip.tv/
    • A wide variety of videos, some of which are CC licenced.
  • http://www.ourmedia.org/
    • Ourmedia is a community of individuals dedicated to spreading grassroots creativity: videos, podcasts and other works of personal media.

Unit for the Enhancement of Learning and Teaching, University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent CT2 7NQ

Enquiries: +44 (0)1227 823314 or email the learning technology team

Last Updated: 17/10/2012