Libraries are valuable sources of information about the right way to use images. It’s good to remind people that just grabbing images from the web is not legal, not safe, and not nice. Teach people that this is stealing, and totally inappropriate!
Instead of being thieves, encourage people to use images that are legal to share. One really handy way you can tell that something is legal to use is looking at the Creative Commons license. There are a variety of different licenses, all with different levels of restriction so everyone can use material in a way that is okay with the creator.
The easiest license to understand: the universal, CC0 license. It looks like this:
“The person who associated a work with this deed has dedicated the work to the public domain by waiving all of his or her rights to the work worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights, to the extent allowed by law.
You can copy, modify, distribute and perform the work, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission.”
You can search for these images (and other materials) at CreativeCommons.org – and now you can access all the great materials from the Smithsonian museums that are available for all of us to share!
You can find all of this information, and more!, on their FAQ page:
“Welcome to Smithsonian Open Access, where you can explore and reuse millions of digital items from the Smithsonian’s collections (2.8 million at February 2020 launch). We have released these images and data into the public domain as Creative Commons Zero (CC0), meaning you can use, transform, and share our open access assets without asking permission from the Smithsonian.”
Why Smithsonian Open Access?
Since the Smithsonian’s founding in 1846, its mission has been clear: “the increase and diffusion of knowledge.” We want to empower people everywhere to participate in that mission with us in new and innovative ways for the 21st century.
Smithsonian Open Access invites you to discover a world where you can learn, research, explore, and create in ways you couldn’t before. By making our trusted collections easier to access and use, we hope to inspire people to build new knowledge to understand our world—past and present.
What does Smithsonian Open Access include?
Open access applies to digital assets that are created, stored, or maintained by the Smithsonian. This might include text, still images, sound recordings, research datasets, 3D models, collections data, and more.
How can I use Smithsonian Open Access content?
We invite you to download, share, and reuse our open access assets for art and creative projects, education, scholarly research, digital media projects, publications, merchandising, and more—all without charge or restrictions from the Smithsonian. Third-party or legal restrictions may still apply to your use (see the Smithsonian Terms of Use).
Visit our “Open Access Remix” page for examples of creative and innovative projects based on our open access collections.
How do I browse and download Smithsonian Open Access content?
You can find our CC0 assets in the following places:
- Smithsonian Open Access portal
- Individual websites of Smithsonian museums and research centers
- Smithsonian Learning Lab
- GitHub repository
- Smithsonian public API
- Smithsonian Figshare for research data
- Third-party platforms such as Creative Commons, Digital Public Library of America, Internet Archive, Wikimedia Commons, GBIF, and bulk download of natural history collections data in DarwinCore format via National Museum of Natural History internet publishing toolkit (IPT) utility
How do I access open access metadata for collection objects?
You can access open access metadata and register for an API key via the Smithsonian’s public API hosted on api.data.gov. Documentation regarding fields, departments, and data types is available through the API as well. Portions of metadata are made available for all digital images of public domain objects whose underlying work is in the public domain, including a URL to a corresponding image file. Objects in the Smithsonian’s collection that may have copyright or other limitations have portions of metadata with CC0, but no media file is provided by the Smithsonian due to limitations.
Users can also access the Smithsonian’s collection data via a GitHub repository. Detailed documentation is available along with the data formatted in .JSON. Please note that the Smithsonian does not support pull requests. Data is refreshed at a weekly rate, so please check often for the latest revisions.
CC0 Smithsonian collection data and media are also available from Figshare, Internet Archive, Wikimedia Commons, and Wikidata.
Read through the rest of this material on their FAQ page!