Open Content
This guide brings together information about Open Access Resources and Open Educational Resources. It aims to make Open Access resources easier to find and use for study, teaching and research.
Images
There are many different sources available that allow you to download freely available and reusable image resources which are openly licensed for reuse under certain conditions. You can use the resources in this guide to help you find and identify open licensed reusable images.
Open content image searches
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Google ImagesSearch for an image in Google images, then use the Tools button to select an appropriate licence with the usage rights filter.
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OpenversePreviously known as CC Search, Openverse has a facility to search across multiple sources for material labelled for re-use under a CC licence.
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Wikimedia CommonsWikimedia operates on a copyleft principle so the majority of media, images, video, sound files are in the Public Domain, CC0, or CC BY-SA licensed.
Attribution and why it matters
"Creative Commons 10th Birthday Celebration San Francisco" by tvol is licensed under CC BY 2.0
You can use CC-licensed materials as long as you follow the license conditions. One condition of all CC licenses is attribution.
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Best practices for attributionCreative Commons wiki page with guidance and examples for good attribution.
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Will it bite me? Media, licensing, and online teaching environments 3: OER & Creative CommonsThis video covers Open Educational Resources, Creative Commons licences, and attribution of materials in online teaching environments.
Art gallery, library and museum open image collections
Nathan Coley, The Basic Material is Not the Word but the Letter. Main Library, University of Edinburgh. © University of Edinburgh Art Collections
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Public Domain ReviewAims to shine a light on curiosities and wonders from a wide range of online archives, highlighting content that has now fallen into the public domain and is no longer protected by copyright.
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Smithsonian Open Access CollectionCollections include images and data from across the Smithsonian’s 19 museums, nine research centers, libraries, archives, and the National Zoo.
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University of Edinburgh Image CollectionsThe University of Edinburgh Library collection of digitised images from our library, archives, and museums. A number of images within the collection have been openly licensed.
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VADSVisual art collections comprising over 140,000 images that are freely available and copyright cleared for use in learning, teaching and research in the UK
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Wellcome CollectionThousands of Creative Commons licensed images from historical library materials and museum objects to contemporary digital photographs.
Check your copyright!
All images are covered by copyright whether they are from print or electronic sources. To avoid the copyright trap :
- Use image collections (like those identified in this guide) which are licensed for educational use or search for licensed Creative Commons images
- Acknowledge and attribute the source of any image you decide to use
- Using a reverse image search engine can be helpful in identifying commercial images for which payment to re-use is required or ownership is unclear
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Tin EyeTin Eye reverse image search will help you check that an image is genuinely free to use.
Photographic open content collections
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FlickrMany Flickr users have chosen to offer their work under a Creative Commons license; you can browse or search through content under each type of license. Our Centre for Research Collections (CRC) has a Flickr channel highlighting some of the excellent openly licensed content in our collections.
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PixabayA large percentage of Pixabay images are openly licensed.
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UnsplashHigh resolution photographs all free to download and use.
Medicine and science open image collections
"#23311 [Ultrastructural morphology exhibited by coronaviruses]" by Alissa Eckert, MSMI; Dan Higgins, MAMS. This image is in the public domain and free of any copyright restrictions.
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Britain from Above*Users must register - subject to Crown copyright.* A unique aerial photographic archive of 1.26 million negatives and more than 2000 photograph albums, dating from 1919 to 2006.
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Jet Propulsion Laboratory - Space ImagesOver 10,000 freely available images of the Solar system, stars and galaxies and climate change.
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Macaulay Library Wildlife Media Archive28 million images and recordings of birds, mammals, amphibians and more. Free for educational use if attribution given.
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MedpixMedPix® is a free open-access online database of medical images, teaching cases, and clinical topics, integrating images and textual metadata including over 12,000 patient case scenarios, 9,000 topics, and nearly 59,000 images.
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Public Health Image Library (PHIL)A catalogue of images from the Center for Disease Control. Use by public health professionals, the media, laboratory scientists, educators, students, and the worldwide public for reference, teaching and presentations is encouraged.
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WISC-Online Asset RepositoryFree images, animations, audio, and video clips across activity categories including STEM, Education & Training, Manufacturing, Finance, Marketing, Audio/Video Technology
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WoRMS : World Register of Marine SpeciesPhotogallery of marine organisms. Images are available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-commercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.