!Please add resources in alphabetical order!

 

25 Free Stock Photography Sites

Digital Image Magazine offers this list of sites that have photos you can use free of charge/copyright. Read the comments for additonal recommendations. Some sites may include not school appropriate images. Be sure to read terms of use for each site.

 

30+ Places to Find Creative Commons Media

"For those of you unfamiliar with the concept, these are files you can use in the creation of web sites and other media, free of charge. However, do be mindful that there are different degrees of the license, and some of them are for private use only, or they may require that you include an attribution to the original creator. Make sure to read and understand the various licenses, and which one each file you discover uses..."

 

Animal Photos

Creative Commons-licensed photos of animals. Arranged by animal name. Each image indicates the type of Creative Commons license associated with the picture and how to attribute photos.

 

Audio Archive

Contains over a hundred thousand free digital recordings ranging from alternative news programming, to Grateful Dead concerts, to Old Time Radio shows, to book and poetry readings, to original music uploaded by our users. Many of these audios and MP3s are available for free download.

 

Clipart ETC

A resource of over 38,000 clipart images from Florida Educational Technology Clearinghouse. Every item comes with a choice of image size and format as well as complete source information for proper citations in school projects. Searchable database or find images via site map list. Teachers and students can use up to 50 images in a project with no further permission. Credit the Clearinghouse when using images. Need backgrounds for presentations? Check out Presentations ETC.

 

Copyright Friendly--Copyright-Friendly and Copyleft Images and Sound (Mostly!) for Use in Media Projects and Web Pages, Blogs, Wikis, etc.

"Most of the media in these collections are attached to generous copyright licensing. Though you may not need to ask permission to use them when publishing on the Web for educational purposes, you should cite or attribute these images to their creators unless otherwise notified! If you see any copyright notices on these pages, read them for further instructions."

 

Creative Commons Directory

A wiki list of organizations and projects powered with Creative Commons licenses.

 

Creative Commons Search Page

Users are able to limit search results by "works I can modify, adapt, and build upon" or "works I can use for commercial purposes." For a quick intro to Creative Commons, watch the short video "Wanna Work Together."

 

Dreamstime Free Stock Photos

Be sure you/students choose the Free Images tab to search.

 

EveryStockPhoto

"We are a search engine for free photos. These come from many sources and are license-specific. You can view a photo's license by clicking on the license icon, below and left of photos. Membership is free, without advertising, and allows you to rate, tag, collect and comment on photos."

 

Flickr Free Use Photo Group

Flickr group of photos that you can use without copyright restrictions. You can search Creative Commons under Explore on Flickr menu to find photos with various Creative Commons licenses.

 

Flickrcc

Search Flickr for photos with Creative Commons license. Be sure to include attribution for any photos you use.

 

Free Antique Images

Thousands of free antique images--maps, advertising, posters, Native American photographs, and more--available for free personal use. Owner will email a free high-resolution file.

 

Free Clip Art by Phillip Martin

Free art for classroom, newsletters, or wherever you can find a non-profit use.

 

FreeMusicArchive

This is a social music website built around a curated library of free, legal audio. The tracks on the site are pre-cleared for a variety of modern-day uses, including pod-safe audio, samples for remixes, music for audio and video productions.

 

FreePlay

Thousands of tracks of all types of music that is available to use free of charge. "Freeplay's first product, the Freeplay Music Library, is a comprehensive collection of High End Broadcast production music spanning all the popular musical genres, available for download."

 

Freesound

"The Freesound Project aims to create a huge collaborative database of audio snippets, samples, recordings, bleeps, ... released under the Creative Commons Sampling Plus License. The Freesound Project provides new and interesting ways of accessing these samples, allowing users to

• browse the sounds in new ways using keywords, a "sounds-like" type of browsing and more
• up and download sounds to and from the database, under the same creative commons license
• interact with fellow sound-artists!"

This site does not have music; think crickets or fireworks or traffic.

 

 

Guide to Sound Effects

This page contains a number of ideas on how to create various sound effects.

 

Joyce Valenza's long list of copyright friendly images and sound

Most of the media in these collections are in the public domain or are attached to generous copyright licensing.

 

KW's Public Domain

"You have arrived at the main page for my public domain images. On the following pages you will find hundreds of beautiful images gleaned from my collection of old books, magazines, and postcards. They are all from material printed prior to 1923 and are in the public domain."

 

Library of Congress Photo Archives

"The Prints & Photographs Online Catalog (PPOC) provides access through group or item records to about 75% of the Division's holdings, as well as to some images found in other units of the Library of Congress..."

 

Morguefile

The morguefile--like a newspaper morgue--offers free photos for commerical and personal use. "The morguefile free photo reference archive provides the public and creative community with a repository of free raw photo materials. These images can be used in your commercial or private projects." You can browse by category or filter photos by color, keyword, size, and others.

 

MusOpen

"Musopen is an online music library of copyright free (public domain) music. We want to give the world access to music without the legal hassles so common today. There is a great deal of music that has expired copyrights, but almost no recordings of this music is in the public domain. We aim to record or obtain recordings that have no copyrights so that our visitors may listen, re-use, or in any way enjoy music. Put simply, our mission is to set music free."

 

NASA Images

NASA Images is a service of Internet Archive ( www.archive.org ), a non-profit library, to offer public access to NASA's images, videos and audio collections. Images may be downloaded for educational and informational purposes.

 

NOAA Photo Library

National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration: "More than 10,000 new images ... New search capability ... Thousands of stunning ocean exploration photographs, coral reef photographs, and polar regions photographs ..."

 

Old Book Illustrations

"This site is designed to provide you with a wide range of illustrations scanned from old books. Most of these pictures are wood engravings or woodcuts, fewer are etchings or copper engravings; Visitors looking for nineteenth century or victorian clipart might just find it here. You are welcome to use our pictures in your school or educational projects, as well as in your artwork or in your scrapbook; you can also use them to make CD sleeves, banners or any part of a website."

 

Open Clip Art Library

This project aims to create an archive of user contributed clip art that can be freely used. All graphics submitted to the project should be placed into the Public Domain according to the statement by the Creative Commons. 

 

pacdv.com/sounds

You may use the sound effects on this web site free of charge in your video, film, audio and multimedia productions (but do not re-sell them or post on a web site for download).

 

PD Photos.org

Royalty free,public domain stock photos available for use by anyone. Lots of professional quality photos--including 98 photos of cheese! Photos of nature, places, computers, events, and much more.

 

Photl.com

Photl.com is the owner and distributor of the largest collection of exclusive free photos (Free Stock Photo Images) of high resolution for commercial purposes. All the photo images are subject to extended license on usage (Extended Royalty Free). They are absolutely free and are intended to be used in commercial activity.

 

Photos8

"This is a place for free public domain photos and desktop wallpapers. Large collection of High Resolution photos and wallpapers, Thousands of high quality public domain pictures, easy to search, All photos on Photos8.com are public domain."

 

Pics4Learning

"Pics4Learning is a copyright-friendly image library for teachers and students. The Pics4Learning collection consists of thousands of images that have been donated by students, teachers, and amateur photographers. Unlike many Internet sites, permission has been granted for teachers and students to use all of the images donated to the Pics4Learning collection."

 

Podsafe Audio

According to FreeTechnologyForTeachers, "PodSafe Audio is a community of musicians who create music and share it for the purpose of fair-use in podcasts."

 

Project Gutenberg

Project Gutenberg is the first and largest single collection of free electronic books. Materials are in the public domain.

 

Project Playlist

Projectplaylist.com is an information location tool similar to Google® and Yahoo!® but devoted entirely to the world of music. Their purpose is to help you find and enjoy music legally throughout the web in the same way that other search engines help you find webpages, images, and other media, but they also add a social /community twist. They make it easy for you to create playlists, share your playlists with friends, and browse playlists of others. In addition, they have a very interesting copyright notice of their own.

 

Public Domain 4U

"The best MP3's in the public domain"

 

Public Domain Images (.net)

"Royalty free stock photos. All pictures are free for commercial and personal use."

 

Public Domain Music

"A reference site to help identify public domain songs and public domain music. [includes] lists of public domain music, royalty free music recordings you can license, and public domain sheet music reprints."

 

Public Domain Photos (.com)

 

Royalty Free Instrumentals 

From the homepage: "Whether you are a hip hop artist, underground rapper, dancer, DJ, etc..., we have something for you. All of our selections are FREE MP3 Downloads, meaning you download for FREE, then use them for FREE. Download hip hop music that is created just for rappers. Download R&B music that is created just for singers. We want to provide an absolutely affordable way to break into the hip hop music world and get some A&R exposure. Browse our quality hip hop beats, rap beats, and more...Then download our royalty free beats to get started. Use our instrumentals for any media project: demo, album, TV, radio, film, studio, party, web, etc... We also offer music production links and record label links.

 

SnagFilms

"SnagFilms is committed to finding the world‘s most compelling documentaries, whether from established heavyweights or first-time filmmakers, and making them available to the wide audience these titles deserve. SnagFilms.com is a website where you can watch full-length documentary films for free, but we’re also a platform that lets you “snag” a film and put it anywhere on the web [blog, Web site...] With a library of over 550 films, and rapidly growing, you’re bound to find films that resonate with your interests. We make it easy for you to find a film that shines a light on a cause you care about. You can then open a virtual movie theater on any web site, so any one can watch your favorite SnagFilms for free."

 

Sound Jay

"Welcome to Sound Jay's free sound effects web site! You are allowed to use the sounds on our website free of charge and royalty free in your projects but you are NOT allowed to post the sounds on any web site for others to download, link directly to individual sound files, or sell the sounds to anyone else."

 

Soungle.com

"The simplest way to search and find sounds."

 

StockVault

"Stockvault.net is a stock photo sharing website where designers and photographers can meet to share their images. You don’t have to sign up to be able to download our images, but we’d like you to do so anyway, just so you can gain access to our special features. All images on this site are free for personal and non-commercial usage." Does not work well with Safari.

 

stock.xchng

"Browse through the categories of our huge gallery containing over 350.000 quality stock photos by more than 30.000 photographers! Need a wallpaper for your desktop or illustration for your blog? Need a pic for your commercial website design? Looking for inspiration? Have a look around."

 

Uncle Sam's Photos

A directory of US Government photo galleries.

 

Wikimedia Commons

"Wikimedia Commons is a media file repository making available public domain and freely-licensed educational media content (images, sound and video clips) to everyone, in their own language. It acts as a common repository for the various projects of the Wikimedia Foundation, but you do not need to belong to one of those projects to use media hosted here." 

 

World Images

"The internationally recognized WorldImages database provides access to the California State University IMAGE Project. It contains almost 75,000 images, is global in coverage and includes all areas of visual imagery. WorldImages is accessible anywhere and its images may be freely used for non-profit educational purposes. The images can be located using many search techniques, and for convenience they are organized into over 800 portfolios which are then organized into subject groupings."