Finding CC licenced images on Flickr

City Dock, by Clinton Little

Images are a good resources, and can be used in many contexts. However, often we just pull 'free' images from the web, which, on closer examination of the 'usage policy' or licence turn out to be not so free. When you get an image from somewhere, check on the licence! You should assume that the image is not ok to use, unless you find an indication otherwise!

So how do you find images? Some institutions (e.g. governmental or science institutions) publish their images with licences that allow (re)use. But you can also go to an image library (such as Flickr) and find Creative Commons licensed images there. This is how you find Creative Commons licensed images on Flickr.

Go to the advanced search on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/search/advanced/

• In "Search for", enter the words you are searching for (either in 'tags' or 'free text')
• Further down, select "Only search within Creative Commons-licensed content".

For example,

• to search for the tag 'animal', with any CC licence, use this search: http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=animal&m=tags&l=cc&ct=0&mt=all&adv=1
• to search for the "free text" 'badger', with a CC licence that allows derivatives, search like this: http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=badger&l=deriv&ct=0&mt=all&adv=1

To find out more about the "no derivatives" clause, see http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Frequently_Asked_Questions