Friday, June 19, 2015

A Plethora of Public Domain Image Resources

As instructional designers, we are always looking for new and bigger collections of freely available image and educational resources to use when developing courses. According to Merriam-Webster, images in the public domain "belong to the community at large, are unprotected by copyright or patent, and are subject to appropriation by anyone." In other words, they can generally be utilized by anyone in virtually any situation for educational, personal, or commercial projects. As such, these are the types of images we seek in order to be free of copyright restrictions and legal liabilities. Most designers have their favorite image galleries to peruse, but I would like to share what I have found to be one of the largest collections of public domain image resources available:


Categories of image collections include:
  • General Collections
  • US Government resources
  • Subject-based Collections
    • Art
    • Automotive
    • Clip Art
    • Computer-generated
    • History
    • Literature
    • Logos and flags
    • Music
    • Religion
    • and more