Finding OERs using search services
There are a number of search services that allow you quickly and easily find a wide range of open educational resources and open licensed content.
Google allows you to filter your search results in order to find Creative Commons licensed images.
To do this, go to Google Image search https://www.google.co.uk/imghp and enter your search term. Click the Tools option to bring up an additional menu bar that enables you to filter your search results by size, colour, usage rights, type and time.
Select ‘Usage rights’ to choose from a drop down menu with the following options:
- Not filtered by license
- Creative Commons licences
- Commercial & other licences
Selecting “Creative Commons licences” will return all Creative Commons licensed images.
Note: Before reusing content, check the licence details on the source page and check the exact terms of reuse. For example, the licence might require that you give credit to the image creator when you use the image or have additional requests that Google is unable to pick up in a general search.
Reverse Image Search
You can use the Google Chrome browser to search for the source of an image. Right click the image and select “Search Google for image”. This should help you to find the original source of an image and any associated licence information. There are a number of additional search services that will allow you to search for the source of an image, including Tin Eye Reverse Image Search.
Openverse – The Creative Commons Search
Openverse is the successor to CC Search which was launched by Creative Commons in 2019, after its migration to WordPress in 2021. Openverse searches across more than 800 million Creative Commons licensed images and audio tracks from open APIs and the Common Crawl dataset, allowing you to search for open licensed and public domain images from a wide range of sources including Wikimedia Commons, Flickr, Smithsonian, Europeana, NASA, Rijksmuseum and more.
Searches can be filtered by use or licence types.
Click through to the media you’re interested in for information on where to download the file and how to give attribution. Openverse actually provides attribution and licence information in four different formats for you to copy and share.
Europeana
Europeana allows you to cross search thousands of European archives, libraries and museums to find cultural heritage content of all kinds.
Europeana’s advanced search facility has a number of filters including “Can I use this?” which enables you to find public domain and open licensed content.
You can also use Europeana to find open licensed content from the University of Edinburgh’s collections, by filtering by Institution.