Sources for Public Domain Images
This page lists links to permissions and restrictions of websites that figure in this site’s posts and will be updated as new posts include new sources of public domain images.
This is an excellent source for public domain maps and images of flags. Information on the CIA website at large is in the public domain, unless otherwise indicated by a copyright notice. The policy is found halfway down this page.
Usage restricitions vary. If you are interested in a particular collection, you’ll find information on that collection by clicking “more information” and then “Rights Information.”
If you search the catalog at large by keyword, once you find an image, if you click on it, and then through to “Bibliographic Information,” you’ll find the statement under “Rights Information.” If you are searching by keyword, you’ll save a lot of time by adding to the search box the phrase “no known restrictions.”
Huge collection of public domain maps, but make sure you stay on the site; if you follow the links, you will end up with maps not in the public domain. Visit the FAQs for details.
- Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University.
ALERT: As with the images in the Library of Congress, some of the Beinecke’s are public domain, and some are not. It is up to you to look at the catalog information to see what the copyright status is. Please also visit the Permissions and Copyright page at the Beinecke.
If the image is solely the product of NASA, then it is in the public domain. What you have to watch out for are those that are the product of a NASA collaborator.
As with the Library of Congress, usage restrictions vary but are stated for each digital image in its Digital Copies Description under Details: Use Restriction(s) in the ARC catalog.
The National Archives has digitized part of the Documerica project. Authorized by the EPA, it is a source for public domain images of environmental issues and American society during the 1970s.
Federal Agencies
In the public domain if the image was produced by a Federal employee as part of his or her job:
anita helle said
I am looking for a public domain high resolution copy of Dorothea Lange’s Hinds, Mississippi 1937 photograph–feet of a sharecropper with a necklace of dimes around the ankle. I can look at the image on the lib of congress website, but need a high resolution copy–so I’m looking for other sites.
Professor Anita Helle/Oregon State University ahelle@oregonstate.edu