New York Public Library providing ‘no known copyright restrictions’ photography

Used properly Flickr can be great source for free creative-commons licensed photography. Last year Flickr took the process a stage further with the creation of The Commons, featuring major public photographic collections from around the world including the Library of Congress, Smithsonian, Imperial War Museum and the National Maritime Museum.

All photographs in the Commons collection are subject to ‘no known copyright restrictions’, meaning that the organisations have ‘reasonably concluded that a photograph is free of copyright restrictions’ – I recommend that you read the extended Rights Statement before using any of the images.

This leads to a huge archive of images we can choose to use, but I mention it today because the New York Public Library has this week joined The Commons, unveiling a whole new set of images on topics including: