LibGuides: Copyright for Media Projects: Home

Using Copyrighted Materials in Academic and Creative Work

Using copyrighted material should not be a substitute for creative effort. Your goal should be to understand and demonstrate how the use of a copyrighted work repurposes or transforms the original. For example, you may use copyrighted music for a variety of purposes, but cannot rely on fair use when the goal is simply to establish a mood or convey an emotional tone, or when they employ popular songs simply to exploit their appeal and popularity.

Use language, images, sound, music, and digital media to express and share meaning with an emphasis on transformative uses such as comment and criticism, illustration, stimulating public discussion, or preserving an event or phenomenon.

The Fair Use Evaluator is a tool that can help guide you through the process of making a reasonable fair use determination.

Free/Open Source/Creative Commons Resources

Creative Commons

Flickr (filter to show only CC images)

Wikimedia Commons

Teaching Visual Storytelling: The five-shot method and beyond

Celtx: Free Scriptwriting and Production Studios

The all-in-one system for video and movie planning. Work together to write the script, prepare the shoot, and take your cast and crew into production.

Advanced Media Institute Tutorials (UC Berkeley)

Tutorials on animation, Photoshop, storyboarding, iMovie, voiceover, audio, and much more.

No Film School

No Film School is the leading worldwide community of filmmakers, video producers, and independent creatives. No Film School is where filmmakers learn from each other — “no film school” required. Topics include: editing, post-production, sound, cameras, and more. One may sign up to receive a free high-resolution PDF of The DSLR Cinematography Guide.

Art Collections

Museums may allow you to search some or all of their collections. Image sizes and extent of description will vary from museum to museum. Search for museum websites and evaluate to determine if they provide searchable collections online or virtual exhibits. A website that compiles museum links is: http://www.artcyclopedia.com/museums.html. Below are selected museums with extensive online collections.

Art UK
Collection of 200,000+ oil paintings from local and national museum collections in the United Kingdom. The site is a joint initiative between the BBC, the Public Catalogue Foundation, and participating museums and collections.

British Museum
Use Search box or Advanced Search options, limit to objects with images online.

Europeana Art

Europeana Art introduces you to artists and artworks from across Europe. Explore over 1 million paintings, drawings, prints and other artworks from European public and private archives, galleries and museums, ranging from ancient Roman sculpture to modern design.

Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco

Getty Open Content Program

The Getty makes available, without charge, all available digital images to which the Getty holds the rights or that are in the public domain to be used for any purpose. No permission is required.

La Fayette: Database of American Art from French National Collections (1620-1940)

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Searchable online collection of art from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Musée du Louvre, Paris
Atlas est une base qui permet de consulter l'ensemble des œuvres exposées dans le musée, soit près de 30000 oeuvres. (Interface is in French.) Try using "Recherche simple" for artist name.

Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)

Contains 76,000+ works from the MoMA, all available online and enhanced search filters.

National Gallery, London
Use search box or other options available

National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.
Use search boxes to "Search the Collection"

Rijksmuseum
One of the world’s leading museums in Amsterdam has a ground-breaking new online presentation of 125,000 works in its collection.

Smithsonian Institution
Search over 13.3 million records of museum objects, archives and library materials including more than 2.5 million online media files.

Tate Modern
A high-quality collection of images that have been tagged with descriptive qualities like "hope," "nature," or death." Find an individual artwork and scroll down to EXPLORE at the bottom of the record to find links to other images, concepts or topic