Public Domain

Sources for Documents in the Public Domain and/or with Creative Commons Licenses

Works in the public domain are not protected by copyright. They may be copied, displayed, distributed, or altered in any way, without credit to the original creator.

Texts:

• Open Library
• Project Gutenberg
• The Assayer
• Bartleby (selected texts)
• iBiblio (selected texts)

U.S. Government

• Government Printing Office - http://www.gpoaccess.gov/
• National Archives - http://www.archives.gov/
• University of Michigan Documents Center - http://www.lib.umich.edu/govdocs/

Images

• American Memory (Library of Congress)

Note: Check copyright dates on individual items.

• Liam's Pictures From Old Books

High resolution scans of images in out-of-print books

• America as it Was

Vintage postcards

• Dover Publications

a publisher focusing on public domain materials, particularly images. We have many of their books in the library - just search for "Dover" on Athena.

• Open Clip Art Library

Other Materials

• Prelinger Archives: Films in the public domain. Low resolution.
• Free Curricula Center

Creative Commons

Creative Commons protects some rights in a creative work while releasing others to the public domain. The copyright holder can choose which, if any, rights to reserve. To learn more about the different types of Creative Common licenses and how works protected by them can be used, visit this FAQ.

Selected Creative Commons Sources:

• Search Tools
  • Search engines that allow you to limit results to Creative Commons licensed materials.
  • Directory of sites containing Creative Commons licensed content.
• Multimedia Archives
  • Wikimedia Commons: From Wikipedia. Also includes some public domain material.
  • Remix Reading
• Images
  • Flickr
  • Open Photo Project
• Sounds
  • Free Loops
  • Tribe of Noise
• Other Media
  • O'Reilly's Open Books: Technical books from the highly-regarded publisher.
  • MIT Open CourseWare

  Note: under the Terms of Use stated on the site, these materials cannot be used as part of the curriculum but could be used for tutoring or professional development within our school.