Open Forum

Hello my name is Nick and I am a healthy educator at the Boston Children Museum and  one of the struggles that I face is finding pictures that I can use legally for my activities. Does anyone have any website that they use that could help me with this problem.

Thanks,

Nick

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Nicholas Ventura
Boston Children's Museum
Boston MA
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Hi Nick,

You didn't specify if you're looking for photos or clip art, but here are two sites I use to find images.  For clipart, there's openclipart.org.   If you need audio, video, and photos that are royalty-free, try pond5.com - for some of the stuff on the website there is a charge but for images and footage you can also filter by public domain (Free).

Claudia

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Claudia Ocello
President & CEO
Museum Partners Consulting
Morristown NJ
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Try Archive.org. They have a wealth of material that is largely public domain. I use it all the time to mine old WWII videos and manuals (TMs)for our museum. Searching is cumbersome but worthwhile. It is easy to get distracted by something interesting that is totally unrelated to what you are looking for.

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Lawrence Starr
Museum Manager
American Airpower Museum
Farmingdale NY
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HI Nick,

There are a lot of great resources available out there. Read up a little on copyright issues on these and other forums.

If you use google, and search for images, there is a menu for "More Tools" and one of the options is "usage rights" so you can filter search images for ones that can be reused non-commercially, etc

Also, check out Flickr's "Creative Commons"

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Barton Hays
Monterey Bay Aquarium
Monterey CA
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This is something I have struggled with for a long time as well. Here are the sites I have bookmarked for images. Usage on each of these differs as far as how you need to credit the work and how you can use it, so spend some time with the fine print. Most images taken by Federal employees in the course of their duties are in the public domain, so government sites are good places to look. The last link will take you to some good resources on those.

USFWS National Digital Library

Flickr: Creative Commons

Welcome to the PLANTS Database | USDA PLANTS

Free Vector graphic art, free photos, free icons, free website templates, psd graphic, photoshop brush, font, footage free download

Morguefile.com free stock photos

Ottawa County Parks's albums | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

U.S. Government Photos and Images | USA.gov

Another thing I have found helpful is to make sure I save the copyright information with each file after download. Just right click and pull up the properties window. This helps me remember where the image came from and who/how to credit later.

-Elizabeth

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Elizabeth Bazan
Assistant Curator of Education
Illinois State Museum
Springfield IL
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Definitely read up on Creative Commons & copyright rules.  Here are some sources we've used:

WellcomeImages.org

Flickr.com

www.usa.gov/Topics/Graphics.shtml

Good luck!

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Kathleen McNeece
Cleveland Museum of Natural History
Cleveland OH
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All great suggestions!

Also, check out:

Wikimedia Creative Commons 

United Nations Multimedia -- They're surprisingly quick at emailing high-res files.

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Emily Mohney
Collections Manager
Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center
Skokie, IL
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Try these sites for royalty free images, vectors & illustrations. Best of luck!

The Leading Source Of Free Stock Photos - freeimages

Pixabay - Free Images

No Cost Royalty Free Stock Photography, Vectors and VIdeo | Unrestrictedstock.com

Free Vector Art & Graphics

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Freya Liggett
Museum Manager
Moses Lake Museum & Art Center
Moses Lake WA
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