Open collections & credits
Part of the library comes from collections that publish their images under open licences. This is where they come from and how we credit them.
Where the images come from
- Wikimedia Commons →
Millions of freely licensed photographs and archive scans, uploaded by their creators and by museums.
- Openverse →
A search engine for openly licensed images from many collections.
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art →
Open Access: public-domain works from the Met's collection.
- Smithsonian Open Access →
Public-domain images from the Smithsonian museums and archives.
The licences we accept
Public domain, CC0, CC BY, CC BY-SA, CC BY-NC and CC BY-NC-SA. Nothing under a no-derivatives licence, nothing with unclear terms, and nothing from stock sites whose terms do not allow this use. Images are only ever resized; never edited.
How we credit
Every open-licensed image shows its creator, its licence (linked) and its source (linked) in the session, in the summary grid and in the daily warm-up. Thank you to everyone who publishes their work this way.
Asking for an image to be removed
An open licence covers the photographer's rights, not always the consent of the people shown. If you are in a photo and want it gone, or you own a photo you did not license, tell us and it is hidden right away while we look. Contact →