James P. Adams Library: Finding and Using Good Images: Flickr

The Commons

The Commons
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The Commons was started as a project between the Library of Congress and Flickr to increase access to archival photographs. Since it has spread to other historical or heritage institutions and has created a large pool of public domain, historical photographs.

Photo Usage Information and Participating Institutions

Creative Commons Licensed Images on Flickr

Flickr Creative Commons
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Creative Commons Licenses allow creators to set different attribution, commercial, derivative and sharing restrictions to their work, which often makes reusing or sharing content easier than traditional copyright, while maintaining authorship. In an advanced Flickr search you can limit your results to display only CC licensed works.

Creative Commons
Learn about using Creative Commons Licensing and use here.

Flickr: Using the Advanced Search Features

Limiter/Feature	Use
All of these words The exact phrase Any of these words Full text tags only None of these words	Use these options like you would keyword or subject searches. Use "none of these words" in the place of "NOT" in databases.
Photos / Videos Screenshots / Screencasts Illustration/Art / Animation/CGI	Limit by media type.
Photos & Videos Only Photos Only Videos HD videos only	Limit by media type.
Photos taken Posted	Unlike a Google image search you can find images from a certain time period by searching for images by the date range.
Only search within Creative Commons-licensed content Find content to use commercially Find content to modify, adapt, or build upon	See the box to the right about Creative Commons licensed content.