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Library

Free Media for Creative Use

Audio, image, and video sources that are free of copyright restrictions

Stock Photos

Unsplash
Online repository with 200,000 high-resolution images.
Pexels
Provides free stock photos from its own community or sourced from free image websites.
The Gender Spectrum Collection
A stock photo library featuring images of trans and non-binary models
Pikwizard
Some image categories available, but most useful via keyword search.

Vectors & Illustrations

Open Peeps
A hand-drawn illustration library with vector elements that can be remixed.

Other Images

Wikiview
A visual explorer for the millions of public domain images available on Wikimedia Commons.
Freepik
Includes vectors that are available for free use, with attribution. Does contain ads and pop-ups, so be careful where you click.
Flickr Creative Commons
Search Flickr images with Creative Commons licenses, which may be used under certain conditions such as attribution.

Historical Resources

National Archives
Online public portal providing access to nearly one million electronic records currently in the Electronic Records Archives (ERA), which allows users to refine searches by material type. Material types include moving images, photographs, and sound recordings. Use "Additional information about this item" to check use restrictions.
John Margolies Photographs of Roadside America
This collection from the Library of Congress features more than 11,000 photographs

Digital Collections from Museums

Art Institute of Chicago: The Collection
Filter to "Public Domain" to discover works you can freely use.
Smithsonian Open Access
Download, share, and reuse millions of the Smithsonian’s images.
The Getty, Los Angeles
Filter by "Open Content Images."
The Louvre
More than 480,000 works in the Musée du Louvre and Musée National Eugène-Delacroix.
Google Arts & Culture
Includes online collections from partner institutions.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
Filter by "Open Access Artworks."
The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
NGA Images is a collection of open access digital images.
British Museum Collection Online
The majority of the 1.9 million object images are available for anyone to use for free under a Creative Commons 4.0 license.
The Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
Also lets users create their own online galleries.

Free Media for Creative Use Research Guide by Columbia College Chicago Library is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.