Finding Images

"The Code of Best Practices provides visual-arts professionals with a set of principles addressing best practices in the fair use of copyrighted materials. It describes how fair use can be invoked and implemented when using copyrighted materials in scholarship, teaching, museums, archives, and in the creation of art.

The Code addresses the following five questions:

• Analytic Writing: When may scholars and other writers about art invoke fair use to quote, excerpt, or reproduce copyrighted works?
• Teaching about Art: When may teachers invoke fair use in using copyrighted works to support formal instruction in a range of settings, including online and distance teaching?
• Making Art: Under what circumstances may artists invoke fair use to incorporate copyrighted material into new artworks in any medium?
• Museum Uses: When may museums and their staffs invoke fair use in using copyrighted works—including images and text as well as time-based and born-digital material—when organizing exhibitions, developing educational materials (within the museum and online), publishing catalogues, and other related activities?
• Online Access to Archival and Special Collections: When may such institutions and their staffs invoke fair use to create digital preservation copies and/or enable digital access to copyrighted materials in their collections?"

Source: College Art Association, http://www.collegeart.org/fair-use/

Locating and using openly licensed, creative commons, or public domain content is a great alternative to requesting permissions or doing a fair use analysis on copyrighted images or other educational content. The following sites are a good starting point for your search: