Acadia National Park
Looking north from the Otter Cliffs
Photo Date: 2003 April 19
Photographer: Captain Albert E. Theberge, NOAA Corps (ret.)
Openly Licensed Clip Art and Stock Photography
Search Engines for Openly Licensed Images
- To find works licensed under Creative Commons (CC) licenses: https://search.creativecommons.org/
- CC's new, updated beta image search: https://ccsearch.creativecommons.org/
- For icons, search https://thenounproject.com/. They also use CC licenses.
- You may also have luck with: https://pixabay.com
- Creative works by federal employees whose creative work (photography, writing, etc.) was done as an employee of the Federal Government are typically in the Public Domain.
Open Licenses
Creative Commons (CC) licenses give users of copyrighted works clear guidelines about what they can do with a work.
The CC licenses are explained here: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ (Scroll down on the page until you see the gray boxes with licenses.)
- Example 1: CC-BY (Attribution). Any user can take the work and do what they wish with it as long as they attribute the original creator, and provide a link back to the original work.
- Example 2: CC-BY-NC (Attribution + Non-Commercial). Any user can take the work and do what they wish with it as long as they 1) attribute the original creator, and provide a link back to the original work, and 2) are using it for non-commercial purposes.
For most educational purposes, you can use works with almost any CC license.
Proper Attribution
Here is a photo. Following it are some examples of how people might attribute it.
Ideal Attribution:
"Creative Commons 10th Birthday Celebration San Francisco" by tvol is licensed under CC BY 2.0
Because:
Title? "Creative Commons 10th Birthday Celebration San Francisco"
Author? "tvol" - linked to his profile page
Source? "Creative Commons 10th Birthday Celebration San Francisco" - linked to original Flickr page
License? "CC BY 2.0" - linked to license deed
"Pretty Good" Attribution:
Because:
- Title? Title is not noted (it should be) but at least the source is linked.
- Author? "tvol"
- Source? "Photo" - linked to original Flickr page
- License? "CC BY" - linked to license deed
These examples are provided as "Best Practices for Attribution" by Creative Commons and are licensed under CC BY 4.0. More examples like the ones above can be found on the Creative Commons Wiki page.