Many images from the following sites are in the public domain and can be used freely without permission. However, please read the information provided on these sites very carefully before using them.
American Broadsides and Ephemera
This is a collection of "30,000 searchable printed items that were never intended to last." The library subscribes to this database. You will be required to login with your SCSU username and password for off-campus access. You can use the images for academic, educational, and research purposes. Refer to Terms of Use for additional information.
Art Images For College Teaching
The University of Michigan library provides free access to this collection for teaching purposes.
ArtStor
The Images for academic Publishing Program makes available a collection of high-quality images for scholarly publishing.
Artsy
Provides free and restricted use of a wide array of artists and their works.
BucketListly Blog
Contains free travel photos from around the world that anyone can use.
Burst from Shopify
Thousands of high-quality and royalty-free images available for free download.
Digital Public Library of America
Provides access to a vast collection of images, texts, videos, and sounds from across the United States. Use policy from the DPLA website: "The copyright status of items in DPLA varies. DPLA links to a wide variety of different materials: many are in the public domain, while others are under rights restrictions but nonetheless publicly viewable. For individual rights information about an item, please check the “Rights” field in the metadata, or follow the link to the digital object on the content provider’s website for more information."
Diverse Stock: Sources of Stock Footage and Illustration
A collection of stock photos and images that are more diverse than usual collected by Rebecca Hedreen. All of these collections have free-to-use images under various licensing.
FindAPhoto
Search for free CCO licensed photos by keyword and color
Flickr
Contains photographs and images by amateurs and professionals.In advanced search, you will be able to filter your search by license type.
Frick Digital Collections
Free for personal use in education, teaching, academic study, and research.
Google Images
Select tools,, then rights and then Creative Commons. If the tools search is missing, to to Google Images Advanced Search and there will be many options to narrow your search including usage rights.
Hathi Trust Digital Library
Free use and open access for artworks in the public domain. Check Access and Usage policy.
Library of Congress Digital Collections
Access to artworks in the public domain for free. Rights evaluated by user. Contact relevant divisions for further information.
Life Photo Archive from Google
Add "source:life" to any Google image search and search only the LIFE photo archive.
MorgueFile
Over 380000 high quality, high resolution photos. Free for commercial use. No attribution required.
Nappy.co
Contains beautiful high resolution photos of black and brown people for free.
National Gallery of Art
Users may download— free of charge and without seeking authorization from the Gallery— any image of a work in the Gallery’s collection that the Gallery believes is in the public domain and is free of other known restrictions. Check here for additional information. You can find out if an image is open access or not by contacting the NGA image staff at ngaimages@nga.gov
New York Public Library Digital Collections
This site contains a living database of prints, photographs, maps, manuscripts, streaming videos, and more.
Check the Library's policy for additional information.
NounProject.com
Free icons and stock photos on just about everything.
Pexels
All photos and videos on Pexels can be download and used for free.
Pixabay
Contains high-quality stock images and videos that can be freely used.
Unsplash.com
This is an excellent site for freely usable images.
Visual Hunt
Visual Hunt is a free stock image site featuring high-quality photos.
Wikimedia Commons
Wikimedia Commons is a media repository containing free media files.