LibGuides: Creative Commons Basics for Scholars and Students: Finding CC-Licensed Works

Searching for CC-Licensed Works

CC Search

Part of the Creative Commons license that is embedded on pages here and around the web contains machine-readable code. This allows anyone with access to the internet to search specifically for materials licensed through Creative Commons. The Creative Commons page provides an all-purpose search tool that allows you to find images, music, videos, and other media.

Google's Advanced Search options also provide an easy way to search for CC-licensed content.

Google: "Usage rights: Find pages you are free to use yourself"
Finding Public Domain & Creative Commons Media
From Harvard Law School Library, Carli Spina.

CC Course Materials

Open Courseware Consortium
A free and open digital publication of college and university‐level educational materials. These materials are organized into courses, and often include course planning materials and evaluation tools as well as thematic content.
MERLOT
MERLOT is a collection of course materials and learning aids on many different subjects. Though not all of the content in MERLOT is licensed under CC, performing an advanced search allows you find materials that are CC-licensed.

CC Images

Flickr's Creative Commons
Flickr, an online image-sharing service. Users who upload to the site can license their images under CC, and Flickr allows you to search through these images.
Pixabay
Pixabay is another image sharing service that focuses entirely on openly-available images.
The Noun Project
The Noun Project is a collection of black-and-white icons licensed under CC. Downloading these icons requires users to register for an account with the site.
Bio-Image Search
Biomedical public domain and Creative commons image search tool developed by Stanford Lane Medical Library

CC Music

SoundCloud
SoundCloud is a social sound-sharing site which allows users to create and post their own audio files.
Jamendo
Jamendo is a music streaming and hosting service which features many albums and tracks that are CC-licensed.
ccMixter
ccMixter is a audio hosting and sharing service that specializes in CC-licensed remixes. It allows you to listen to, sample, and mash up audio, and upload their creations back to the site under a CC license.
Community Audio
A service provided by the same organization that hosts the Internet Archive, Community Audio is a library of CC-licensed audio files. These files include music, audiobooks, and other types of audio.

CC Video

YouTube's Creative Commons
YouTube, one of the most popular sites online, has a large collection of uploaded videos licensed under CC. YouTube also features a video editing service that allows you to incorporate CC-licensed videos into your own creation.
Vimeo's Creative Commons
Another video hosting and sharing service, Vimeo features a searchable collection of CC-licensed videos and allows users to select a CC license as they upload their videos.

CC Multimedia

Europeana
Europeana is a digital collection of materials related to European cultural works. Many of the materials come from European museums or museums that house European works. The materials are arranged into exhibits, collecting thematically similar works together.
Wikimedia Commons
An outgrowth of the Wikipedia project, the Wikimedia Commons is a collection of CC-licensed materials being used by one or several Wikipedia pages. The collection includes images, sounds, videos, and other materials.

Examples of CC-licensed Journals

Directory of Openn Access Journals (DOAJ)
Not all journals listed are CC-licensed, but some are.
PLOS