Research Guides: Copyright and Fair Use: Resources for Free/Inexpensive Media

Image Sources

While these sites are "copyright friendly," be sure to check the Terms of Use for details. For example, many will require attribution.

Photographs

Flickr: Creative Commons
Creative Commons Search
StockVault
Find free images submitted by photographers, designers and students.
Pics4Learning
Pics4Learning is a curated image library that is safe and free for education. Teachers and students can use the copyright-friendly photos and illustrations for classroom projects, web sites, videos, portfolios, or any other projects in an educational setting.
Pexels
Free stock photos licensed under the Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license.
Unsplash
This website provides a database of beautiful images that can be used as long as credit is given.
Burst
This website provides free stock photos.
Getty Images

Photographs and Graphics/Illustrations

Pixabay
Pixabay is a resource for copyright and royalty free photos and illustrations. All contents are released under Creative Commons CC0, which makes them safe to use without asking for permission or giving credit to the artist - even for commercial purposes.
The Noun Project
"Free Icons for Everything" All icons are licensed under CC BY licenses.
Wikimedia Commons
Google Advanced Image Search
Using this Advanced Search option, you can limit images by image type, license type, size, or color.

Historical Images

Smithsonian Open Access
Images and data from across the Smithsonian’s 19 museums, nine research centers, libraries, archives, and the National Zoo.
New York Public Library Digital Gallery
Try the "Arts & Literature" link.
American Memory
This collection, from the Library of Congress, includes images and audio.

eBook Sources

E-books, or electronic books, are versions of a book you can read online. Some of these books can be printed or downloaded, often a limited number of pages at a time.

Library eBooks

Ebook Central This link opens in a new window
A digital library from various scholarly and university presses that offers authoritative ebooks covering a wide range of subject areas.
EBSCOhost E-Book Collection This link opens in a new window
E-town pays for access to these 5,000+ current scholarly and popular titles, published from 2000 to the present.
Books @ JSTOR This link opens in a new window
Interdisciplinary collection of eBooks that can be accessed via JSTOR's one search integrated platform, along with the JSTOR archival collections.

Historical Books

Internet Archive
Archive of digital texts, audio, moving images, and webpages.
Hathi Trust Digital Library
HathiTrust is a large-scale collaborative repository of digital content from research libraries.
Project Gutenberg
The original e-book site containing over 17,000 titles, most published 75 or more years ago.

Open Access Books

National Academic Press
Most books published by NAP can be downloaded for free in PDF format. Find the book you want, skip the print price and click "Download Free PDF." You must register to use the free downloads. From the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine
Online Books Page
Links to 25,000 free e-books on the Web, courtesy of the University of Pennsylvania.

Music Sources

Licensed Music

BMI
Elizabethtown College has a license agreement with BMI. Check for titles you can freely use in performances.

Open Music

dig.ccMixter
Search for music licensed with creative commons.
American Memory
This collection, from the Library of Congress, includes images and audio.

Film Sources

Library Streaming Services

Kanopy Streaming Service This link opens in a new window
Kanopy Streaming provides access to over 9,000 educational documentaries and films arranged by collection. Subjects include arts, business, health, media, sciences, humanities and education. Unsubscribed titles only activated on faculty request.
Academic Video Online (AVON) This link opens in a new window
Academic Video Online (AVON) delivers more than 64,000 titles spanning a wide range of subject areas including anthropology, business, counseling, film, health, history, music, and more. AVON includes documentaries, interviews, performances, news programs and newsreels, field recordings, commercials, demonstrations, and original and raw footage.

Current Videos

TED Talks
TED Talks are influential videos from expert speakers on education, business, science, tech and creativity, with subtitles in 100+ languages. Ideas free to stream
PBS Videos
C-Span
Every C-SPAN program aired since 1987. Watch the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings, the Challenger explosion, and much more.

Historical Videos

Internet Archive: Movie Archive
Vast online library of freely available videos and movies, mostly public domain and ephemeral film.
American Memory, Motion Pictures
The American Memory project, from the Library of Congress, offers a plethora of copyright-free resources you can link to.
European Film Gateway
"Access to hundreds of thousands of film historical documents as preserved in European film archives and cinémathèques: photos, posters, programmes, periodicals, censorship documents, rare feature and documentary films, newsreels and other materials...The EFG offers a look at and behind the scenes of filmmaking in Europe from the early days until today. The EFG facilitates online access to historical documents and leads you directly to the archives that hold the originals."