Free image and video banks for your projects and presentations

Simply finding an image or video on the internet doesn't mean that you can use it freely: we recommend you search for content that is in the public domain or that has a Creative Commons licence. This way, you'll be able to illustrate a piece of work, develop a multimedia project or construct your own personal brand while respecting copyright.

We have created this guide to clear up the most frequent queries about the licences for resources, and we have a number of open access audiovisual galleries related to your study area.

What is copyright?

This is the most restrictive option. The © symbol shows who the owner of the work is and that all rights are reserved. Therefore, content under copyright cannot be used or modified without permission. This licence has a specific duration, after which the work enters the public domain.

What is a public domain work?

These are works for which the usage rights set out by law have expired. They can be used by anyone, without prior authorization, providing the authorship and integrity are respected.

What are Creative Commons licences?

CC licences represent a halfway point between the "all rights reserved" of copyright and the "no right reserved" of public domain. The content can be used without requesting the authors' permission.

Under these licences, the author chooses the conditions under which they want to share the work. This way, the intellectual property rights are retained while allowing other people to copy, distribute or use the content under a (more or less) open system.

However, if you find images or videos with this symbol you'll have to check the type of Creative Commons licence to find out how you can use the material. In all, there are six different types.

The licence which gives the most freedom in your projects is CC BY, as it will allow you to reproduce, distribute, transform and publicly disseminate the work for any purpose, including commercial.

All Creative Commons licences require the original source to be cited.

Where can you find images or videos for your work?

There are a lot of high-quality audiovisual banks that offer content under Creative Commons licences or that are in the public domain. For example, Flickr: The Commons, the Creative Commons search engine, and the advanced search of Google Images, filtering by usage rights.

At the UOC Library, we've gone one step further. We offer specialist image and video banks in your study area, such as arts and humanities, education, economics and business studies, and computing and telecommunications.