two great Flickr-only search engines
- Compfight: After searching, click “Creative Commons” in the left column if that’s what you want.
- FlickrStorm: Click “Advanced” immediately under the search box to get CC options.
Google Images
- Use Advanced Image Search. Limit to images that are “labeled for reuse” (click on the dropdown menu that says “not filtered by license,” at the bottom of the Advanced Image Search screen).
- Try searching with your keywords + the word digital. Click through to specific images to find out whether they’re from reliable sources (if relevant to your purpose & audience) and that they include any information you need (date, place, source, etc.). Even for a formal academic paper, just because an image is on Flickr doesn’t mean it’s not ‘scholarly’ enough: major museums and libraries are sharing their collections through Flickr streams, and their images’ pages include links back to those collections.
- You can also find very useful and fascinating digital collections of images through regular Google Search (as opposed to Google Images). Try searching there for broad keywords + the words images digital collection (for instance, war posters images digital collection or “civil rights” images digital collection). Pay attention to copyright and licensing information provided by each site: you’re unlikely to find only CC-licensed and public domain images.
