Research Guides: Finding & Using Digital Images: Image Databases & Search Engines

Library Databases

Britannica Image Quest
This education images database provides access to more than two million rights-cleared images from over 50 of the best collections in the world. Subjects include: culinary arts, fashion, medicine, education, sociology, performing arts, architecture and design.

Free Image Databases

Pixabay
Is a repository of public domain images. For more information please see Pixabay's Terms of Use page: http://pixabay.com/en/service/terms/
Flickr: Creative Commons
"Using Flickr under the Creative Commons license, images may be used, edited, copied or distributed provided the owner is credited. Please refer to the conditions specified for each of the images you use" (from website).

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"Using Flickr under the Creative Commons license, the original artist/owner of the image keeps their copyright but allows people to copy and distribute their work provided the owner is credited" (from website).
Unsplash
Pexels.com
Flickr: The Commons
"Flikr in association with the Library of Congress had launched The Commons to help increase access to publicly-held photography Collections. Participating institutions have contributed photographs with 'no known copyright restrictions'" (from website).

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About the rights statement: http://www.flickr.com/commons/usage/
The New York Public Library Digital Collections
A repository of 700,000+ digital items, including photographs, streamed video, manuscripts and other resources. All of the material housed here is in the public domain.
LIFE Photo Archive Hosted by Google
"Search millions of photographs from the LIFE photo archive, stretching from the 1750s to today. Most were never published and are now available for the first time through the joint work of LIFE and Google" (from website).

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LIFE images are specified for personal non-commercial use only.
morgueFile
"The morgueFile contains photographs freely contributed by many artists to be used in creative projects by visitors to the site. To acknowledge the artist's accomplishments, morgeFile asks that you credit the photographer when possible. Any questions regarding liabilities should be directed to the specific photographer" (from website).

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Please see morgueFiles terms of use: http://morguefile.com/terms
Open Clip Art Library
"The Open Clip Art Library (OCAL) is the largest collaborative community that creates, shares and remixes clipart. All clipart is released to the public domain and may be used in any project for free with no restrictions" (from website).

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Unless noted, content on this site is waived of all copyright and related or neighboring rights under the CC0 PD Dedication.
Wikimedia Commons
"Wikimedia Commons is a media file repository making available public domain and freely-licensed educational media content (images, sound and video clips) to everyone, in their own language. It acts as a common repository for the various projects of the Wikimedia Foundation, but you do not need to belong to one of those projects to use media hosted here" (from website).

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Please see Wikimedia's Terms of Use page: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Terms_of_use
ClipSafari
ClipSafari is a repository for high quality clip art images. These vector graphics files are suitable for all contexts, because they scale up to any resolution without becoming blurry. Many of these graphic files were sourced from the Open Clipart Project.

Search Engines

Everystockphoto.com
"Everystockphoto.com is a search engine for freely licensed photos, and acts as a portal for stock photography. Everystockphoto.com is owned and operated by Vibrant Software" (from website).

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"Everystockphoto.com is a license-specific photo search engine. Currently we index and search millions of freely licensed photos, from many sources, and present them in an integrated search. Everystockphoto.com searches photos under a number of free licenses. We display the license icon to the below and left of images, and clicking this will take you to the license page. Licenses include a variety of Creative Commons, GNU, public domain, and custom free licenses. We also list royalty-free photos from our partner Fotolia. Photos for sale have a dollar sign as a license icon" (everystockphoto, 2006-2010).
Google Advanced Image Search
Under "usage rights" choose the restrictions appropriate for your project.