creativecommons.org is an organization dedicated to making it easy for copyright owners to allow use of their work. Copyright owners can choose from a wide variety of Creative Commons Licenses, which allows them to specify if their work can be used commercially or non-commercially, whether it can be adapted or not, and they can even specify that the end user must release any adaptations made with their material under a similar Creative Commons license.
Creative Commons also hosts an image database where you can search for images released under a Creative Commons license. If you are looking for material to post on the Library website, Libguides, or Social media accouonts this is a great place to look. All of these uses qualify as Non-Commercial.
The following infographic shows the different types of Creative Commons Licenses available:
How To Attribute Creative Commons Photos by Foter is licenced under a CC BY-SA 3.0 License
Copyright Owners can decide to allow use of their material under a license agreement, which allows them to be very specific with how the material may be used. License agreements override copyright law and fair dealing, so it is important to read them carefully. The NIC Library databases are all used under a license agreement which specifies if material can be linked to, uploaded to a password protected site (LEARN or eReserves), used in a course pack, or lent as an Interlibrary Loan. You can see a summary of our license agreements on our Copyright License Permissions Chart page.
When we use the Canva.com account to create posters/handouts etc. we are using it under the websites terms and conditions, which allows us to use their images without needing copyright permission or attribution.