Lost and Found: Appropriated, Recycled and Reclaimed Images

This is a legacy resource guide for a past course. Please email Sara Smith with questions about these resources or research in this subject area.

Information on Copyright, Permissions, and restrictions

Digital images and media in ACDC, ARTstor, Naxos, and other subscription databases are provided for members of the Amherst academic community for use in teaching, study, and research. Amherst College students, faculty, and staff may use these images for in-class presentations, as well as papers, assignments, and some senior theses without obtaining permission. Media should always be cited. Unless a work is in the public domain, inclusion in a published or commercial work or a non-Amherst-password-protected website may require permission from the copyright holder.

Use of images is sometimes covered by the concept of "Fair Use." See the College Art Association's page on Intellectual Property and The Arts for more information.

Questions about this guide? Contact
  • American Music
    Nearly 7,000 albums of music from America's past, including civil rights, political campaigns, Prohibition, wars, and more.
  • Amherst College Digital Collections
    Digitized art works, photographs, manuscripts, books, and other media from Amherst College Archives & Special Collections and the library’s Art & Architecture Collection.
  • ARTstor
    Image database including architecture, painting, sculpture, photography, decorative arts, and design as well as many other forms of visual culture.
  • Classical Music Library
    Classical music recordings (14,000+ albums) including vocal, choral, chamber, orchestral, solo instrumental music and opera.
  • Database of Recorded American Music (DRAM)
    Scholarly resource of recordings including New World, Composers Recordings (CRI), Albany Records, Mode, Frog Peak and BMOP.
  • Oxford Music Online
    Oxford Music online is the access point for Grove Music Online and other Oxford music reference resources.
  • Naxos Music Library
    Streaming music; listen to songs or the complete CD. Most extensive collection of classical music available, but also includes jazz, world music, spoken word, and more. Adobe Flash Player 10 is required for streaming.
  • Naxos Video Library
    A performing arts video library that includes operas, ballets, documentaries, live concerts, and musical tours of historic places.
  • Smithsonian Global Sound
    In partnership with Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, a virtual encyclopedia of the world's musical and aural traditions.
  • Television News Archive (1968 to present)
    Searchable archive of abstracts of news broadcasts from 1968 to present (ABC, CBS, NBC), 1995 to present (CNN), selected content from PBS and FOX News.
  • UbuWeb
    Large web-based educational resource for avant-garde material.

"Hidden" images in full-text databases: 
Many indexes and multidisciplinary databases will allow you to limit your search search to articles containing images, photographs, or illustrations. You can also find images in these resources by using keywords such as "illustration" in your search. A few databases that have specific search options for images include:

Also see the Image Research Guide

Public Domain video

Archive.org (includes Prelinger Archives & Library) 
Creative Commons media site
Creative Commons on Vimeo
The Open Video Project
The Public Domain Review
Videvo
The White House video
YouTube Public Domain movies

Public domain or rights-free images

Ancient World Image Bank at NYU - free digital imagery for the study of the ancient world
Artsy Education - artworks from galleries, museums, and private collections
Digital Public Library of America - catalog of public domain and openly licensed images and other digitized materials from archives, libraries, museums, and other U.S. cultural heritage institutions
Digital Scriptorium - image database of medieval and renaissance manuscripts
Flickr Commons - public photography archives from major institutions
Getty Open Content Images database - digitized materials from the Research Institute's collection
Library of Congress American Memory - open-access photograph collection
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Collection - digitized documentary photographs, architecture, design, and engineering materials, and prints
New York Public Library's Digital Gallery - images from the NYPL's collections, including illuminated manuscripts, historical maps, vintage posters, rare prints, and photographs
Rijksmuseum API Collectie - downloadable, high-resolution images of works in the museum's collection
Smithsonian Institution Collections Online -works from the collections within the broad categories of Art & Design, History & Culture, and Science & Technology
Wikimedia Commons - database of freely usable images and other media

Public domain and rights-free sound

Freesound 
FindSounds
Free Music Archive from WFMU
ccMixter
Open Source Audio at Archive.org
Soundsnap 

    Slides from copyright session: 

    Copyright law of the United States
    https://www.copyright.gov/title17/

    Amherst College copyright page
    https://www.amherst.edu/library/about/policies/copyright

    College Art Association's page on Intellectual Property and The Arts

    Cornell University Fair Use checklist
    http://copyright.cornell.edu/policies/docs/Fair_Use_Checklist.pdf

    Columbia University Copyright Advisory Office
    http://copyright.columbia.edu/copyright/
    A go-to guide for any and all copyright questions pertaining to publishing, preservation, and higher education.

    “Copyright Term and the Public Domain in the United States”
    http://copyright.cornell.edu/resources/publicdomain.cfm

    The Orphan Film Symposium
    http://www.nyu.edu/orphanfilm/

    QuestionCopyright.org
    http://questioncopyright.org/

    Creative Commons
    http://creativecommons.org/