21 Resources: Search and Find
There are literally millions of educational resources — photos, illustrations, videos and film, audio clips, courses, articles, research — that have been released with an open-copyright licence or are in the public domain and available to open textbook authors and publishers. Below are online libraries, projects, directories, repositories, and websites where you will find both individual objects and full resources. If you have difficulty finding what you need, be creative and look for the desired item — photo, graphic, video — in an article from one of the many open academic journals or an open textbook. Another trick is to use several synonyms when searching for a hard-to-find resource.
Many sources contain items that range in user permissions from no copyright (e.g., in the public domain) to CC licences to all rights reserved. Make it your practice to check every resource’s licence or permissions before adding it to your open textbook. User rights have been noted beside some of the below sources.
Chapter table of contents
Mixed collections (open and restricted materials)
Libraries, museums, and book collections
- Audio
- Courses, lectures, and lessons
- Games and interactive simulations
- Images: charts, clip art, graphs, icons, photos, symbols, vectors
- Maps
- Open academic journals
- Videos and film
Canadian collections
- Canadian Museum of Nature [New Tab]: Collection data are available under a CC BY licence. Images are available under a CC BY-NC licence.
- cIRcle [New Tab]: This OER repository is from the University of British Columbia. Each item is individually marked with copyright permissions.
- Images Canada [New Tab]: See Terms and Conditions [New Tab] for information about usage
- Library and Archives Canada [New Tab]: See Terms and Conditions [New Tab] for information about usage
- Open Collections [New Tab]: Check each item used in this collection, from the University of British Columbia, as permissions vary
- Project Gutenberg – Canada [New Tab]: Books that are in the public domain in Canada
- SOL*R (Shareable Online Learning Resources) [New Tab]: Higher education and government material from British Columbia and released under CC licences
Mixed collections (open and restricted materials)
Creative Commons (CC)
- Content Directories [New Tab]: A list of organizations and projects released with CC licences
- CC search (in beta) [New Tab]: Images from several open archives
- CC Search [New Tab]: Find audio, images, and videos from many websites. Check individual items and websites for terms of use.
Flickr
- Flickr – advanced search [New Tab]: Limit search to CC licensed materials only
- Flickr: Internet Archive Book Images [New Tab]: Check each item for permissions
- The Commons [New Tab]: Found on Flickr in partnership with The Library of Congress [New Tab]. Participants are cultural heritage institutions who share publicly held photography collections. There are “no known copyright restrictions” on the