Research Guides: Creative Reuse: Using Archival Footage, Photos, & Audio: Home

Citation Help

Best Practices for Attribution
This guide provides detailed examples for how to properly credit Creative Commons resources.

Copyright & Fair Use Resources

Copyright

Copyright Basics from NYU Libraries
A guide to copyright law as it relates to academic research, teaching, and publication.
U.S. Copyright Office
Copyright is a kind of intellectual property monopoly. And if it was intellectual property Monopoly, this site would be “Go.” Translation: Start here.
How to Register a Work
This site takes you to eCO, where you can file a copyright registration for your work through the Copyright Office online system.
Stanford University Libraries: Copyright & Fair Use: Charts and Tools
This helpful page of links includes a handy chart to help you try to determine if a work is still under copyright.

Public Domain

Stanford Copyright Renewal Database
This database is one of many tools to help you search for whether a work is still under copyright or not.
Copyright Term and the Public Domain in the United States
A chart to help you understand the labyrinthine laws regarding when a work will fall into the public domain. The chart is available as a PDF.

Creative Commons

Creative Commons
Creative Commons tools can help share your work and choose a simple, standardized way to give your permission to share and use your creative work. Go here to learn more about CC licenses as they might apply to your work or work you wish to reuse.

Fair Use

NYU's Applying Fair Use Guide
An indispensable resource, created just for the NYU Community.
Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video
Similar to the Documentary Best Practices, this document "helps creators, online providers, copyright holders, and others interested in the making of online video interpret the copyright doctrine of fair use."
Doc Filmmakers’ Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use
Handbook written by veteran filmmakers to help other filmmakers understand some instances where using copyrighted material without clearance is considered fair use.
Recut, Reframe, Recycle: Quoting Copyrighted Material in User-Generated Video
Report by the Center for Social Media, American University.
More Fair Use Codes
Additional codes of best practices across various fields and practices from the Center for Media & Social Impact.

Open Image & Multimedia Collections

START HERE: CC Search
Use this prototype to find images that you can use and remix, across several open archives, including Flickr, MOMA, and NYPL with easy one-click attribution.
public.work
A search engine for public domain content with over 100,000+ copyright-free images from the archives of The MET, New York Public Library, and other sources.
British Library Image Collection on Flickr
The British Library (BL) has released over one million images from 17th, 18th, and 19th century books on Flickr. Equally important, the images and metadata have been released into the public domain.
Although the images and data are available for use and reuse without restriction, BL is following an increasingly common trend among GLAM institutions where attribution is requested (rather than required).
Critical Commons (Fair Use Video Clips)
Critical Commons is a public media archive and fair use advocacy network that supports the transformative reuse of media in scholarly and creative contexts.
Digital Public Library of America
The Digital Public Library of America brings together the riches of America’s libraries, archives, and museums, and makes them freely available to the world.
Flickr Creative Commons
Many Flickr users have chosen to offer their work under a Creative Commons license, and you can browse or search through content under each type of license.
Free Music Archive
Archive of public domain and Creative Commons licensed songs managed with a curatorial approach.
Freesound
Freesound is a collaborative database of Creative Commons Licensed sounds. Browse, download and share sounds.
Internet Archive
Internet Archive is a non-profit digital library offering free universal access to books, movies & music, as well as 376 billion archived web pages. Be sure to check out the Prelinger Archives!
Oral History Association - Centers and Collections
The OHA's list of oral history centers and collections. A great way to get started looking for oral history recordings of interest to you.
Library of Sounds
The Library of Sounds contains sound libraries that can be used for anything, from professional high-end projects to personal short-form content. There are free and for purchase options.
US Library of Congress Flickr Stream
The LOC Flickr collection offers sets of digitized photos: the 1,600 color images from the Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information, 1,500+ images from the George Grantham Bain News Service, selected panoramic photographs, portraits of jazz musicians and personalities, and other photos from the Library of Congress collections that possess these qualities: they have long been popular with visitors to the Library; they have no known restrictions on publication or distribution, and they have high resolution scans.
Wikimedia Commons: Commons: Free Media Resources
A list of links to free media sources created by Wikimedia Commons.

Interesting Archives

Home Movie Collections of the Internet Archive
This collection of home movies includes amateur films and videotapes from the collections of the Center for Home Movies and other home movie aficionados. This collection includes amateur productions, home movies and home videos of family activities, travelogues, dramas and a variety of homemade films from the last century, as well as ephemeral films about home movie making.
Lantern - Film Ephemera
The search and visualization platform for over 1.3 million pages of digitized books and magazines from the histories of film, broadcasting, and recorded sound.
An open access co-production of the Media History Digital Library and the University of Wisconsin-Madison Department of Communication Arts.
Library of Congress Digital Collections
Collections include, American Memory, a digital library of historic maps, photos, documents, audio and video of American culture; the National Jukebox featuring over 10,000 78rpm disc sides issued by the Victor Talking Machine Co. between 1900 and 1925; and the Veterans History Project, first-person stories of wartime service through personal artifacts, audio and video interviews.

Stock Media Sources (Some Require Fees)

AudioSocket
Audiosocket is a music licensing and technology company that provides creative music licensing solutions for all media, including student and indie film licensing.
Bandcamp
Discover amazing new music and directly support the artists who make it...you will still need to reach out to artists about licensing for non-fair use instances.
Death to Stock
Sign up with your email and get free sets of images every month along side occasional stories, giveaways and community emails.
Getty Images
High resolution royalty-free images, editorial stock photos, vector art, video footage clips and stock music licensing in an extensive and high quality search library.
Pexels
All photos on Pexels are licensed under the Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license. Attribution is strongly encouraged.
Unsplash
Over 550,000 free (do-whatever-you-want) high-resolution photos brought to you by the world’s most generous community of photographers.
Vimeo Stock
Royalty-free stock video footage you can’t find anywhere else and special savings for Vimeo members.

Creative Reuse: Using Archival Footage, Photos, & Audio

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Copyright & Fair Use Resources

Copyright

Public Domain

Creative Commons

Fair Use

Open Image & Multimedia Collections

Interesting Archives

Stock Media Sources (Some Require Fees)

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