Research Guides: Photography: Image Copyright

Suggested Guide:

Royalty Free Images
by Carly Freeman Last Updated Aug 14, 2023 6 views this year

Copyright Free Images

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Image by Hamish Reid, Pandemonia Photography, London, England.

Flickr: The Commons
Photos, with no known or limited copyright restrictions, available from The Library of Congress, Brooklyn Museum, NYPL, Smithsonian Institution, Bibliothèque de Toulouse, Australian War Memorial Collection, George Eastman House, Imperial War Museum Collections, The Field Museum Library, National Galleries of Scotland Commons, Getty Research Institute and 20 other participating institutions.
Images from Creative Commons
Search sites such Fotopedia, You Tube, Europeana, Jamendo, Flickr and others for images, media and music for creative and commercial use.
World Images
provides access to the California State University IMAGE Project. It contains over 80,000 images, is global in coverage and includes all areas of visual imagery
VARA: Visual Artists Rights Act
Unsplash
Pexels

Obtaining Rights & Permissions

Determine if permission is needed.
Identify the owner.
Identify the rights needed.
Contact the owner and negotiate whether payment is required.
Get your permission agreement in writing.

Stanford Libraries Basics of Getting Permission

Basics from Getting Permission
SCALA Archives
Scala Picture Archive represents over 7300 museums in Europe, Russia, United states and other countries. Images from the major museums of Italy, including the Vatican can be found here

IAP

IAP: Images for Academic Publishing from ARTstor
Over 6400 images from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and 3,900 images from the Mellink Archive (Bryn Mawr College) are available for scholarly publications through ARTstor

Images in Social Media

Images in social media have an implied license. For example, by creating a page you give an implied license for others to view and download. Implied license does not mean you can copy page. In the case of Facebook, you can share a photo through the "share" feature, but could not sell a photo found on social media.

Copyright for Educators and Librarians

Kevin Smith, MLS, JD; Lisa A. Macklin, MLS, JD; Anne Gilliand MLS, JD