What is the Public Domain?
The Public Domain is all to do with intellectual property and copyright laws. Whilst a lot of images are free for you to look at online, it’s the knowing of whether you can then use them for the purposes of class or for students’ work that creates the confusion. This is where the public domain comes in. If something is in the public domain it means that it’s not ‘owned’ by anyone and therefore has no legal restriction to use.
Here are some websites dedicated to just delivering Public Domain materials:
Images (photos, art, and clipart)
www.freefoto.com
www.photos8.com/
www.burningwell.org/
www.public-domain-photos.com/
www.wpclipart.com/
morguefile.com/
www.publicdomainpictures.net/
www.acliparthistory.com/
www.public-domain-photos.com/
www.openclipart.org/
www.reusableart.com/
Music
Musopen.com
www.pdmusic.org/
www.publicdomain4u.com/
imslp.org/wiki/Main_Page – sheet music
There is a wealth of public domain sites out there on the net so simply search ‘public domain’ and see what else you can find.
Also, if you’re using Wikipedia and want to know if a photo is in the public domain, click on the photo and scroll down to the licensing section. It will then have recorded in the section if the image is in the Public Domain.