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Open Educational Resources

A resource guide on Open Educational Resources

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Open Ancillary Materials

Government Resources

Everything published by the Federal government is free of any copyright restrictions.  The research, reports and websites can be useful resources for classes when creating your own course material. Government documents more generally (with some minor exceptions) are also in the public domain:

Open Images

General Images

Art & Architecture

  • Cleveland Museum of Art: search collection filtered for open access images.
  • Europeana:  Search, save and share art, books, films and music from thousands of cultural institutions, funded by the European Union.
  • Getty Open Content Search: Search filtered for open content.
  • Metropolitan Museum of Art: Filter by open access
  • Open Access at the National Gallery of Art: "The National Gallery of Art has an open access policy for images of works of art in our permanent collection which the Gallery believes to be in the public domain. Images of these works are available for download free of charge for any use, whether commercial or non-commercial."
  • Open access image libraries—a handy list: From Apollo: The International Art Magazine. A list of museums and other archives that provide unrestricted downloads of high-resolution images.
  • Paris Musées: Over 350,000 images in the public domain.
  • Rijksmuseum: Browse 772,396 works of art and 696,160 Rijksstudios (user collection "sets")
  • Smithsonian Open Access: " more than 4.5 million 2D and 3D digital items from our collections—with many more to come. This includes images and data from across the Smithsonian’s 21 museums, nine research centers, libraries, archives, and the National Zoo."
  • Watercolour World:  Free database of pre-1900 documentary watercolours from private as well as public collections around the world.

History

Science

  • NASA Images: "NASA has always told its story through its images, a few of which have become icons of human history."
  • NOAA Photo Library: National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration. Generally speaking, content created by government agencies is free for public use (not copyrighted).
  • Images: USGS: "Explore our planet through photography and imagery, including climate change and water all the way back to the 1800s when the USGS was surveying the country by horse and buggy."
  • Images from the History of Medicine: "History of Medicine (IHM) in NLM Digital Collections provides online access to images from the historical collections of the U.S. National Library of Medicine. IHM includes image files of a wide variety of visual media including fine art, photographs, engravings, and posters that illustrate the social and historical aspects of medicine dating from the 15th to 21st century." *Check each image for copyright/licensing information before reuse!
  • Public Health Image Library (PHIL): Centers for Disease Control & Prevention. "The imagery showcased in the PHIL is historic in nature."

Open Video

Please note that while some repositories listed below contain public domain or Creative Commons-licensed videos, many include videos that are freely-accessible, but not issued with an open license for reuse or adaptation. In such cases the videos should be accessed by a link.

Open Audio