LibGuides: Copyright for Students: Weblinks

Sites for finding usable free content

download icon Try the sites listed below for finding and downloading free image, audio, and video content.

Some material may be covered by a Creative Commons license, but is available royalty-free. A royalty is a payment due to a license holder. Works covered by Creative Commons licenses do not require fees, but may require attribution (credit to the creator) and may have some use restrictions.

Read use restrictions carefully. If you are unsure if a work is usable, test it using the tools in this guide.

Sites for finding content

Library of Congress "Unique in their scope and richness, the picture collections number more than 15 million images. These include photographs, historical prints, posters, cartoons, documentary drawings, fine prints, and architectural and engineering designs." Many are in the Public Domain.
MorgueFile "Morguefile is a free photo archive “for creatives, by creatives.” Founded by Michael Connors in the early Internet days of 1996, the site was created to serve as a free image exchange for creative professionals and teachers to use in their work. "
National Archives "The vast majority of the digital images in the National Archives Catalog are in the public domain."
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"The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is the nation's record keeper. Of all documents and materials created in the course of business conducted by the United States Federal government, only 1%-3% are so important for legal or historical reasons that they are kept by us forever.
Those valuable records are preserved and are available to you, whether you want to see if they contain clues about your family's history, need to prove a veteran's military service, or are researching an historical topic that interests you.'
New York Public Library Digital Collections NYPL has over 700,000 items in their digital collection - including audio and video.
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To find reusable content, choose "search only public domain materials" in the search box.
Pexels "Pexels provides high quality and completely free stock photos licensed under the Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license. All photos are nicely tagged, searchable and also easy to discover through our discover pages."
Pixabay "On Pixabay you may find and share images free of copyrights. All pictures are released under Creative Commons CC0 into the public domain."
Unsplash "Beautiful, free photos. Gifted by the world’s most generous community of photographers."

Freesound.org Freesound.org is a user-driven collaborative for sharing free sound files, e.g.: nature sounds, sound effects, ambient noise.
ccMixter ccMixter is a community-driven site which features samples and remixes of music covered by Creative Commons licenses
Incompetech A site that contains royalty-free music, mostly licensed under a Creative Commons license.
Videvo Free sound effects with varying types of royalty-free licenses
BBC Sound Effects These 16,000 BBC Sound Effects are made available by the BBC in WAV format to download for use under the terms of the RemArc Licence. The Sound Effects are BBC copyright, but they may be used for personal, educational or research purposes, as detailed in the license.
YouTube's Audio Library This is an instructional video explaining the options, terms, and conditions for using free sound effects and music from YouTube.

Coverr All of the videos on Coverr are under the following license: CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication
Pexels Videos Free videos licensed under the Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license.
Videvo Free downloadable videos with various types of royalty-free licenses

Limited quotations or paraphrases are permissible with proper attribution, but as a general rule, you must create your own written content—especially for college assignments.

Images are from Openclipart (CC0 1.0)