Tag Archives: Creative Commons

Finding Creative Commons Licensed Content

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At the end of May, Creative Commons celebrated the first birthday of CC Search, a discovery tool for online openly licensed and public domain works:

CC Search searches across more than 300 million images from open APIs and the Common Crawl dataset. It goes beyond simple search to aggregate results across multiple public repositories into a single catalog, and facilitates reuse through features like machine-generated tags and one-click attribution.

Currently CC Search only searches images, but we plan to add additional media types such as open texts and audio, with the ultimate goal of providing access to all 1.4 billion CC licensed and public domain works on the web. [Creative Commons]

DSS staff have found CC Search a very useful tool for finding Creative Commons-licensed content. Below, are several additional tips and tools we’ve found useful:

  • Google Advanced Search: Using Google’s Advanced Search, select an option under Usage Rights, to search for CC content.
  • Flickr: Allows users to search images by type of Creative Commons license.
  • ccMixter: A community music remixing site featuring remixes and samples licensed under Creative Commons licenses.
  • Europeana: Facilitates searches for content found in European cultural institutions. Once you run a search in their search bar, you can limit your results to items that are freely usable or available under a Creative Commons–found under “By Copyright” in the left menu.
  • Folger Shakespeare Library Digital Image Library: All images found in this collection are licensed CC BY-SA, meaning that you are allowed to use the image only if 1) you cite the Folger Shakespeare Library as the source, and 2) you license anything you create using the images under the same or equivalent license.

If you want to use any CC-licensed content you find, be sure to provide proper attribution. Fondren’s Creative Commons guide provides some best practices.

Using Images in Theses and Dissertations

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Digital Scholarship Services frequently receives questions from grad students about using images in theses and dissertations. Specifically, they want to know if they can use a copyrighted image in their manuscript.

When possible, we encourage authors to use images in the public domain or licensed with a Creative Commons license to prevent any copyright issues. But, generally, there is agreement within the academic community that use of images in theses/dissertations falls under fair use. To help support the case for fair use, we encourage authors to:

  • Only include images that are critical for your work. Do not use them for aesthetic purposes.
  • Include significant commentary about the image.
  • Include proper citations for images used.

Fondren Library has several online resources that can help authors navigate image use in publication:

Fondren Library staff can provide Rice faculty, staff, and students consultation and referral on a number of copyright issues, including fair use, author rights, inclusion of copyrighted material in University courses, and reuse of licensed library resources. Contact us at cds@rice.edu.

Note: Library resources have been assembled with input from Rice General Counsel’s office, but is not intended to serve as legal advice.