Finding free images online!

Judy O'Connell has provided a terrific guide to finding free images here.
She says "It’s not just about copyright – its about being practical, and showing students the wonderful world of possibilities beyond Google images or taking anything they find that is not actually in the public domain – a vital point as more students and teachers move into online environments of blogs, wikis and more. Including images with postings enriches the experience for the reader and can also help to illustrate or support the writer’s viewpoint." Thank you Judy!

More historical photos on flickr and Wikipedia

An article in New York Times "Historical photos in Web archives gain vivid new lives" by Noam Cohen 18/1/2009 tells of the Commons facility on flickr and most recently the huge donation of about 100,000 photos from the German archive to Wikimedias Commons the vitual archive for images on Wikipedia. In both cases the sharing of these resources is leading to improved cataloguing information about the images, as members of the public assist in recognising the content of the images.

Fantastic guide to finding and using images safely!

I cannot overpraise the new image search tutorial "Internet for Image Searching"from intute and TASI. At last we have an easy place to go to find out about how to find images for our own use, to recommend to academics and for use by project students. The pros and cons of using search engine collections are explored along with specialist sites and the implications of Creative Commons licences. I shall be looking at this site in detail myself, for good advice and to keep abreast of the many subject collections available for use. Perhaps I should start a favourite site of the month : this would be it!

New pics on flickr

Following the success of Library of Congress images on the flickr The Commons project, there have been some more additions from The Smithsonian Institution, Brooklyn Museum, George Eastman House, and other historical collections.

Creative Commons images on flickr

There is a Creative Commons search here which allows searching a number of sites including flickr, all from one page. It might save you a bit of time.
Otherwise there is a new site here "fashioned by Ryan & Bryan with glue sticks and rubber bands, " (I quote) which is good for tag searches and limiting to Creative Commons material.

Free use flickr

Taking Creative Commons further, a Free Use group has been set up on flickr which has at the top "The photos in this group are available for use by anyone. There is no need to give credit or to fear rights infringement. These images are posted by their creators. By posting to this group, you're allowing freedom of use.We know that these images still have the "rights reserved" stamp on them. Frankly, we don't know how to get this removed yet. We're working on it. " There may be some images here which are of use in your teaching or presentations.