Images & Sounds: Home

Historical American images curated by the Library of Congress.

Free images for non-commercial academic/educational use.

Burst is a free stock photo site. All the photos on their platform are offered under the Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license, which means you’re welcome to use the photos for any purpose.

Search tool for creators seeking to discover and reuse free resources. All content is under Creative Commons licenses or in the public domain.

Free high quality stock video clips, available for download.

Royalty free photography organized and collected by Flickr users.

Database of stock photography, updated regularly. Credit Free Images in your bibliography.

Google’s Advanced Image Search allows you to filter by file type, image size and usage rights.

Source for Moving Images, Audio, Texts, Music and Software. “The Internet Archive, a 501(c)(3) non-profit, is building a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form. Like a paper library, we provide free access to researchers, historians, scholars, and the general public.”

The collections of the Prints & Photographs Division include photographs, fine and popular prints and drawings, posters, and architectural and engineering drawings.

Google-hosted archive of historic Life magazine images. Search tip: Add "source:life" to any Google image search and search only the LIFE photo archive. For example: computer source:life

Free high quality stock video clips, available for download. Credit the author in your bibliography.

NYPL Digital Collections provides free and open access to thousands of digital resources; audio, video, webcasts, images, prints, photographs, and texts. Materials downloaded from the NYPL Websites may only be used for personal, educational, or research purposes. They may not be used for commercial purposes.

Photos archived by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

Teachers and students can use the copyright-friendly photos and illustrations for classroom projects, web sites, videos, portfolios, or any other projects in an educational setting.

Thousands of images, video and sound files from dozens of Smithsonian museums, archives, and libraries.

A database of 5,364,032 freely usable media files to which anyone can contribute. “You never know what you’re going to get, but it may be splendid.”

“The internationally recognized WorldImages database provides access to the California State University IMAGE Project. It contains almost 75,000 images, is global in coverage and includes all areas of visual imagery. WorldImages is accessible anywhere and its images may be freely used for non-profit educational purposes.”

Royalty Free Music. Free license to use with attribution for multimedia projects, websites, animations, etc.

Musician-driven repository of background music, ambient sound and effects. Looks to be regularly updated and requires no login.

Easy resource for sound effects. No account required.

Samples and loops in a variety of formats and genres. No account required, but free member login does provide premium options.

Full archive of music in different genres, curated by a musician collective. No account required.

Source for Moving Images, Audio, Texts, Music and Software. “The Internet Archive, a 501(c)(3) non-profit, is building a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form. Like a paper library, we provide free access to researchers, historians, scholars, and the general public.”

Database supported by Creative Commons. Tons of free resources, as well as some premium content for members.

Free historical recordings curated by the Library of Congress.

Thousands of images, video and sound files from dozens of Smithsonian museums, archives, and libraries.

Straight forward resource for ambient sound and sound effects. No account required.

Royalty-free sounds, music, and loops available for you to use in your presentations and videos.