Images: Using images in your work

This site was not written by an attorney. The information provided here is not legal advice. Links are not endorsements of any product.

Images can add interest and substance to your work; however, many images have copyright or attribution restrictions.

To avoid copyright violation, it is recommend that you use works in the public domain or licensed under a Creative Commons license.

Visit our Copyright research guide for more information about fair use, public domain, licensing, artificial intelligence, and more. These are some good starting points:

Public Domain

• Public Domain Image Resources in Wikipedia
• Finding Public Domain and Creative Commons Media, a guide from Harvard University Law School Library
• The Public Domain Review 

Creative Commons

• Search for content in the Creative Commons 
• About Creative Commons licenses
• How to properly attribute Creative Commons-licensed work

Rights Statements

Many institutions that create digital collections have adopted standardized rights statements as defined by rightsstatements.org, making it easier for users to determine if they can use the images in their own projects