Open Source / Public Domain Materials

28 Dec 2022

If you’re in need of free to use, and possibly free to adapt – what the legal types call derive – images and possibly audio, there are two places you should definitely bookmark:

• Library of Congress
• Smithsonian Open Access encourages downloading, sharing, and reuse of its millions of 4.4 million 2D and 3D digital items from their collections, with the promise of more to come. This includes images and data from across the Smithsonian’s 19 museums, nine research centers, libraries, archives, and the National Zoo. They note there’s no need to ask for permission.
• Openverse
• Yale Center for British Art: http://britishart.yale.edu/collections/search.
• The Lewis Walpole Library: http://images.library.yale.edu/walpoleweb/ usually allows free reproduction inside scholarly books and journals.
• Rijksmuseum (change to English): https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/rijksstudio offers public domain, free to use.
• Welcome Library: http: //wellcomeimages.org/. Public domain, free to use: amazing range of subject matter beyond medicine and science.
• The Folger Shakespeare Library: http://luna. folger.edu/luna/servlet/FOLGERCM1~6~6. Pretty good policy about reusing material inside scholarly books and journals.
• At LACMA, look for images marked “Public Domain High Resolution Image Available” – many from 18th century: http://collections.lacma.org/
• http://www.metmuseum.org/research/image-resources#scholarly & via Images for Academic Publishing at ArtStor: http://www.artstor.org/content/collaborations
• NYPL has some lovely digitized pieces from 18th century, believe it or not, and all public domain: http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/.
• Wikimedia Commons - includes notes about public domain images to identify them for use. For example: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jean_Sim%C3%A9on_Chardin_The_Monkey_Antiquarian.jpg.
• Digital Public Library of America http://dp.la/.
• British Library on Flickr https://www.flickr.com/photos/britishlibrary/ Public domain images that they allow people to use are on their Flickr account.
• Fisher Library in Toronto only charges for reproducing the images in digital format: very reasonable rates.
• The PIMS in Toronto has an amazing collection: http://www.pims.ca/the-institute/directory-e-mail-and-telephone-contacts.
• And what is FADIS.

You can go back to the logbook or dive into the archive. Choose your own adventure!