This week, we’re celebrating Open Education Week and the continued exploration of open resources, practices, and tools! If you’re looking for media to spice up your work and are on a budget, you may be looking for whatever you can find online. It can be hard to differentiate what is freely available on the web from what you are allowed to use without infringing copyright. You can remove this uncertainty by using resources available to search for openly licensed content using Creative Commons Licenses. Creative Commons licenses work to benefit both the licensor and the licensee. They give permission in advance to those looking for the sights, sounds, and movement they’re after to use the work without fear of infringement while also giving the creator the proper attribution they deserve for the work they’ve done. Altogether, there are seven licenses, ranging in level of openness.
Here are some websites featuring Creative Commons licensed resources of specific media types:
Images: There are dozens of portals for finding openly licensed content available. While you can always find open images on sites like Unsplash or Pixabay, consider expanding your search horizons to a different search engine. Here are a few different options: Bing may not be your first thought when searching, however, their image search features a solid filter to refine your results by Creative Commons licenses. When you click “filter,” you are given multiple options, including one for “license.” When you choose “license,” you are given different options, including “All Creative Commons Licenses” and “Public Domain,” to name a few. While helping with assets for the upcoming March Mammal Madness tournament, I found Openverse to be extremely helpful in finding tons of openly licensed images. The database pulls from numerous repositories, making searching easier as well as providing clear licensing information for all images and links to the original source. Images provided by federal agencies, such as NASA, the National Park Service, and the Smithsonian, are also great as they are typically in the public domain. Resources are also available to help find images that promote diversity, equity, and inclusion. A few examples are Nappy, which features licensed stock photos of people of color, and Images of Empowerment, showcasing working women’s lives around the world.
Audio: If you’re hunting for audio, whether for music or sound effects to spice up your projects, a few options include the Free Music Archive (FMA) and the YouTube Audio Library. With FMA, you can scour numerous genres of music full of tons of songs that are licensed to be used for whatever creative projects you have going on. Remember to click on the song itself and read its description to verify which license is used and give the proper attribution. The YouTube Audio Library is very similar, except that if you’re already uploading content to YouTube, you can integrate it through their upload studio. The YouTube Audio Library provides an added bonus by allowing you to browse a large collection of sound effects, should those be something you need to bring everything together. Again, be sure to read descriptions of everything to make sure of its license and attribution.
All media: If you only want to visit one site to find what you need, then Wikimedia Commons would be your best bet. Wikimedia Commons provides free-to-use content of three media types: images, audio, and video. Like previous sites, when you click on a particular item that interests you, you’ll find the licensing and permission details provided for you below the media. When you expand the “permission details,” Wikimedia shows the content’s Creative Commons license and defines it for you so you don’t have to check back to outside sources. IF you know what kind of license you’re looking for, you can limit your search by license from their home page, choosing specific Creative Commons licenses or works in the public domain.
This is only a fraction of what is available as openly licensed content. Creative Commons offers its own search portal where you can search for items from other sites that partner with the organization. Copyright is a tricky matter and something that often causes anxiety. Save yourself a headache by using openly licensed materials. If you wish to learn more about Creative Commons and copyright in general, check out the ASU Library Copyright Library Guide. For strategies and additional resources, view the Open Education Library guide, or sign up for the Introduction to Creative Commons Licenses and Finding Open Content webinar from ASU Teach Online.