Business OER & Fair Use

The Digital Public Library of America brings together the riches of America’s libraries, archives, and museums, and makes them freely available to the world.

Flickr maintains The Commons, which offers access to images no known copyright restrictions from over 70 institutions ranging from NASA to the National Library of Sweden. In almost all cases, the images have already entered the Public Domain for one reason or another. Users can limit their image searches to a specific institution by navigating to an institution's photostream and then selecting that option from the dropdown options that appear as the user types a search into the search box. You can upload your photos to Flickr (different from Flicker's The Commons) and choose to offer some or all of them under a CC0 public domain designation.

The US Library of Congress is home to one of the richest sources of information in the world. Its archive of digital images representing the various sections of the Library includes photos, drawing, posters, prints, engineering and architectural blueprints that have both local and international scope. The photo archives represent a visual documentation of the history, culture, lifestyle, achievements and interest of the American people.

The vast majority of the digital images in the Online Catalog are in the public domain. Therefore, no written permission is required to use them. We would appreciate your crediting the National Archives and Records Administration as the original source. For the few images that remain copyrighted, please read the instructions noted in the "Access Restrictions" field of each catalog record.

This resource curates a collection of images, books, films and audio files that are available in the public domain. The collection can be browsed by medium, time period, tag and source. Once you are in a collection, you can also sort by the type of public domain rights that apply to the items (for example, whether it is in the public domain everywhere in the world).

A collection of public doman image resources, grouped by subject. Categories include objects, animals and plants, nature/science, history, locations, art, logos and flags, sports, and more.