MaxGuides: OER Service: Open Access Images

Open Access Images A-Z

Archives of Modern Art from the Smithsonian
Terms of use are here: http://www.si.edu/termsofuse/
Art Images for College Teaching
AICT is a royalty-free image exchange resource for the educational community.
The Becker Collection: Drawings of the American Civil War Era
The Becker Archive contains approximately 650 hitherto unexhibited and undocumented drawings by Joseph Becker and his colleagues, nineteenth-century artists who worked as artist-reporters for Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Weekly observing, drawing, and sending back for publication images of the Civil War, the construction of the railroads, the laying of the transatlantic cable in Ireland, the Chinese in the West, the Indian wars, the Chicago fire, and numerous other aspects of nineteenth-century American culture.
CSIRO science image
CSIRO science image is an image library specializing in science and nature images. It is presented by CSIRO, Australia's major science research organization. All images are free to download under a Creative Commons license.
Flickr Creative Commons
Many Flickr users have chosen to offer their work under a Creative Commons license, and you can browse or search through content under each type of license.
Getty
Getty, the world's largest photography service, has recently announced it is making most of its collections (35 million photos) available free for non-commercial reuse online and on social media sites, as long as users use Getty's embedding tool, which will insert automatic image credits. Find out more about the background to the decision.
The IAN/UMCES Symbol and Image Libraries
From the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Sciences
Library of Congress American Memory Project
American Memory provides free and open access through the Internet to written and spoken words, sound recordings, still and moving images, prints, maps, and sheet music that document the American experience. It is a digital record of American history and creativity.
Library of Congress Science Reference Service Selected Internet Resources -- Government Resources for Science Images and Video
The Internet resources below are organized by broad scientific classes. Since many of these sites are interdisciplinary in nature, there may be some overlap.
Library of Virginia Prints and Photographs Collection
With more than 500,000 items, the Prints and Photographs Collection at the Library of Virginia provides an astonishing visual account of the commonwealth: 19th- and 20th-century family albums, posters, scrapbooks, mixed ephemera, bookplates, postcards, lithographs, etchings, engravings, drawings, all manner of photographic prints, film and glass-plate negatives, 35mm slides, and images digitally inscribed onto compact discs.
US Department of Agriculture Image Gallery
Please note photos in our Image Gallery are copyright-free, public domain, images unless otherwise indicated."

NASA Images
"NASA content - images, audio, video, and computer files used in the rendition of 3-dimensional models, such as texture maps and polygon data in any format - generally are not copyrighted."
National Gallery of Art (NGA) Images
NGA Images is a repository of digital images of the collections of the National Gallery of Art. On this website you can search, browse, share, and download images. A standards-based reproduction guide and a help section provide advice for both novices and experts. More than 42,000 open access digital images up to 3000 pixels each are available free of charge for download and use. NGA Images is designed to facilitate learning, enrichment, enjoyment, and exploration.
NYPL Digital Gallery
Provides access to over 550,000 images digitized from primary sources and printed rarities in the collections of The New York Public Library, including vintage posters, historical maps, rare prints, and photographs.
Open Clip Art
"We try to make it clear that you may use all clipart from Openclipart even for unlimited commercial use. We believe that giving away our images is a great way to share with the world our talents and that will come back around in a better form."
Pixabay
"All images and videos on Pixabay are released free of copyrights under Creative Commons CC0. You may download, modify, distribute, and use them royalty free for anything you like, even in commercial applications. Attribution is not required."
Public Domain Review
"As our name suggests all the historical works found on our site are in the public domain, at least somewhere in the world. Care should be taken as laws on re-use and what is in the public domain varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction."
Science.gov
This is a federated search over many databases created by US Government agencies. A variety of branches of science are included. To limit your search for only images and other multimedia resources, click on the "Mutimedia" tab once you have done a search.
U.S. Government Photos and Images
Links to government and state images and mutimedia resources on topics ranging from the arts to the environment to science. MOST, BUT NOT ALL IMAGES ARE IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN, SO BE SURE TO CHECK.
Unsplash
All photos published on Unsplash can be used for free. You can use them for commercial and noncommercial purposes. You do not need to ask permission from or provide credit to the photographer or Unsplash, although it is appreciated when possible.
US Department of Agriculture Image Gallery
"Please note photos in our Image Gallery are copyright-free, public domain, images unless otherwise indicated."