It just got a lot easier for students to find copyright-friendly content using Google Image Search.
Here’s how:
After entering a search term, click on Search Tools. A pull-down menu appears offering a variety of options: not filtered by license, labeled for reuse, labeled for commercial reuse, labeled for reuse with modification, labeled for commercial reuse with modification.
This tweet from Google’s Matt Cutts attributes the request for improvement to Creative Commons founding board member and open culture hero, Lawrence Lessig.
Now you can slice/dice Google image searches by usage rights under “Search tools. Thanks to @lessig for the request! pic.twitter.com/8mQxxebTHJ — Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) January 14, 2014
In the past, we had to lead students to the little gear that appeared after a search, offering hidden access to Google’s Advanced Image Search. Once there, students had to scroll to the very bottom to find the elusive Usage Rights filter.
Only the most intrepid searchers would bother.
(Here’s what that old way looked like.)
It’s pretty fabulous, and about time that the process is easier in Google.
And, here are several other copyright-friendly image search options:
- Creative Commons Search
- Flickr: Creative Commons
- Google Advanced Image Search
- Flickr Blue Mountain
- Wikimedia Commons
- Compfight / A Flickr Search Tool
- FlickrStorm
- Foter, PhotoPin, and Wylio (great for bloggers!)
- Pixabay (public domain photos)
- PicDrome (public domain photos)
- TinEye (search by CC images by color)
Mostly Public Domain (historical)
- Wikimedia Commons
- Flickr: The Commons
- Google Advanced Image Search (select free to use or share under usage rights)
- Library of Congress Photo Stream on Flickr
- American Memory Collection
- Archive.org
- National Gallery: NGA Images
- NARA (National Archives and Records Administration)
- Flickr: The British Library’s Photostream
- Old Pictures (mostly government photos 1850s to 1940s)
- USA.gov Photos & Images
- Media History Digital Library
- National Archives Presidential Libraries and Museums
- US History Image Bank
- Picturing the Century
- Images of American Political History
- University of Texas’s Portrait Gallery
- NYPL Digital Gallery (Some of the images in the Digital Gallery may be subject to third party rights such as copyright and/or rights of privacy/publicity)
- Smithsonian Galaxy of Images
- Smithsonian Flickr PhotoStream
- EASE History (includes many Federal government images)
- Internet Archive Moving Images
- National Parks Service Imagebase
- American Memory Timeline for Teachers
- New York Public Library Image Archives
- Artifact and Analysis (Smithsonian)
And here’s the Copyright-friendly Toolkit Smore I use in instruction.
Note: Last summer, Bing introduced a pull-down to make it easier to sort results by usage rights.
About Joyce Valenza
You did not mention how you get to the Google page that has all the options (web, images, shopping, more). When I am not signed in and just go to Google’s image or web search, the options are not listed. Even when I sign in, I don’t see these options. I know how to find the old advanced image search page, but the screen shot you posted is not like mine at all! What am I doing wrong?
I wondered myself at first. The important phrase is “After entering a search term,” and it looks like this is only for images. So do a Google Image search and THEN look up top for the filters.
This is great. I’m looking to potentially use space in one of our computer labs. This would be great for the junior high level in aiding in research.