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Open Access: Find OA Images and Other Media

Finding Images

Finding OA Images

flickr google images

Finding images licensed for re-use has become easier. Here are some sites to explore:

Citing Images

For presentations and less formal image use, use a name, title and link.

For formal citations for papers, documentation, reports etc., use the link below.

More information on citing images found on the web with examples for Flickr and Creative Commons images. Help with ALA, MLA and Chicago style citations here.

OA Image, Video, Other Media Collections

Collections of digital images freely accessible to the public.
 
  • Open Culture - Audio books, movies, online course, language lessons, eBooks, cultural icons
  • Open Culture art images and books, including exhibition catalogs
  • Calisphere - "The University of California's free public gateway to a world of primary sources."
  • Wellcome Images - 2,000 years of cultural history with themes ranging from medical and social history to contemporary healthcare and biomedical science.
    Over 150,000 digitized items including photographs, newspaper, political cartoons, works of art, transcribed oral histories, and other unique cultural artifacts from the libraries and museums of the UC campuses and a variety of cultural heritage organizations.
  • Retronaut - a wonderful ever growing collection of popular culture images. Search a wide variety of subjects such as "suffrage," "Monet," or "kitchen." Word of warning, can be habit forming.
  • National Gallery of Art implements an open access policy for digital images of works of art that the Gallery believes to be in the public domain. Images of these works are now available free of charge for any use, commercial or non-commercial.
  • Digital Image Collections Wikispaces  
    The Digital Images Collections Wiki is a resource of Free- and Fair-Use digital image collections that are available for anyone to use for personal or educational purposes.
  • Dartmouth Library Creative Commons Resources by Barbara DeFelice.
  • Flickr- The Commons and Creative Commons 
    World's public photography collection/archive. Library of Congress, various museums, and libraries have also posted photographs for you to view.
  • Creative Commons images in Flickr.
  • CC Search - convenient access to search services provided by other independent organizations.
  • National Portrait Gallery - More than 53,000 low-resolution images are now available free of charge to non-commercial users through a standard Creative Commons license and automated interface.
  • National Gallery of Art - NGA Images is a repository of digital images of the collections of the National Gallery of Art. More than 22,000 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.
  • Rumsey’s Visual Collections  
    Over 300,000 images from over 50 collections including maps, artwork, and photographs that are both free and subscription based collections. All collections are presented in Insight.
  • Wikimedia Public Domain be sure to double-chaeck the copyright status - chock full of great stuff from varied sources.
  • Yale Advertising, Public Relations and Propaganda Page: Image Databases  
    This site is helpful for those studying images in advertising.
  • Visual Resources Online - Digital images of primary materials on public Web sites
    A list of free digital image collections compiled by Anne Blecksmith (C&RL News, Vol. 69, no. 5, May 2008). Links to digital image collectons.
  • Web Gallery of Art is a virtual museum and searchable database of European painting and sculpture from 11th to mid-19th centuries.
  • CONTENTdm Collection of Collections
    A sampling of collections created by the hundreds of libraries and cultural heritage organizations using CONTENTdm digital library software.
  • Comic Strip Generator
    Looking for a comic strip to express a point? This is the place to create your own.

Thanks to Julia Gelfand and her UCI Subject Guide for most of the content here.

Other sources in subscription databases

Scientific and Medical Images

  • Center for Disease Control and Prevention  Rating
    Public Health Image Library (PHIL) Photographs, Illustrations, Multimedia Files
  • Biology Image Library  Rating
    an online collection of images, movies, illustrations and animations across biology and biomedicine, for use in education and research.
  • Galaxy of Images  Rating
    Contains a portion of the more than 1.5 million printed books and manuscripts in the collections of Smithsonian Institution Libraries.
  • Google Images  Rating
  • HON Media  Rating
    HONmedia is an unique repository of over 6'800 medical images and videos, pertaining to 1,700 topics and themes. This peerless database has been created manually by HON and new image links are constantly being added from the world-wide Web. HON encourages
  • Images MD  Rating
    Consists of over 48,000 high-quality images spanning all of internal medicine, all derived from Current Medicine's series of illustrated atlases. Each image is accompanied by detailed explanatory text and citation of the source
  • NASA Images  Rating
    Offers public access to NASA's images, videos and audio collections
  • Online Maps and Aerial Photographs  Rating
    UCI Subject Guide by Brian Williams

Thanks to Julia Gelfand and her UCI Subject Guide.

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