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Sharing Your Work: Copyright & Creative Commons: Home

What is a creative commons license?

Find Creative Commons Licensed Works

  • Creative Commons Search Portal
    • A search portal curated by Creative Commons that searches for content with Creative Commons licenses within various media and content search engines. 
  • Openverse
    • An open source search engine of open source resources including photos, art, and audio recordings.
  • Google Images
    • Go to Tools > Usage Rights > Creative Commons Licenses

A screenshot of a Google images search, outlining the Tools function, the Usage rights dropdown, and the Creative Commons licenses option.

  • Flickr
    • Click on the license dropdown (default Any License) to filter by Creative Commons license.

A screenshot of a Flickr search, outlining the licenses filter dropdown.

Other Resources

  • Sharing Your Work: Creative Commons Licenses teaching session slides
    • The slides from the Oberlin College Libraries' teaching session on April 10th, 2024.
  • United States Copyright Office
    • The official website of the United States Copyright Office, a department of the Library of Congress that "registers copyright claims, records information about copyright ownership, provides information to the public, and assists Congress and other parts of the government on a wide range of copyright issues, both simple and complex" (Home > About > Overview, United States Copyright Office)
    • Fair Use Index
      • The Fair Use Index includes a searchable database of court cases related to fair use, intended to be used by lawyers and the public to guide in determining whether their use of something falls under fair use.
    • Register Your Work
      • The official avenue for registering copyright claims with the United States Copyright Office. Note that this is not required for your work to be copyright protected.
  • YouTube Copyright Rules & Policies
    • A detailed guide of YouTube's policies surrounding copyright law and fair use.
  • Trademark, patent, or copyright - United States Patent and Trademark Office
    • A guide from the United States Patent and Trademark Office to help people determine whether they need a patent, a trademark, or to file a copyright claim.
  • Creative Commons Wiki
    • The official Wikipedia-hosted knowledgebase for Creative Commons.

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