Free-to-Use Images
When you’re thinking about resources for your arts and crafts projects, the Library of Congress (LOC) might not be at the top of your list for where to go to find images.
But it should be.
You should have a look around the LOC’s online collections for inspiration, and for free-to-use downloadable images that can decorate your home, be incorporated into collages, journals and scrapbooks, or be used to create custom printed fabric and paper items.
If you have a commercial website or a personal blog, and use images in the public domain, you know it's sometimes time-consuming and difficult to find image banks which offer a broad range of styles. It's often difficult to find good images which haven't been over-utilized.
The Library of Congress is a monumental depository of information, and has thousands of images available for re-use. It’s a national treasure that's available to the public, and it's getting larger and more expansive every year - adding approximately 12.000 items to the Collections daily.
“The collection of more than 168 million items includes more than 39 million cataloged books and other print materials in 470 languages; more than 72 million manuscripts; the largest rare book collection in North America; and the world's largest collection of legal materials, films, maps, sheet music and sound recordings.”
The expansiveness of the Collection is in part due to a special acquisitions program which extends beyond materials sourced and archived in the United States:
"Since 1962, the Library of Congress has maintained offices abroad to acquire, catalog and preserve library and research materials from countries where such materials are essentially unavailable through conventional acquisitions methods. Overseas offices in New Delhi (India), Cairo (Egypt), Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), Jakarta (Indonesia), Nairobi (Kenya) and Islamabad (Pakistan) collectively acquire materials from more than 60 countries and acquire materials on behalf of United States libraries participating in the Cooperative Acquisitions Program. The Library is also collaborating with institutions around the globe to provide content on the World Digital Library.”
The Prints and Photographs Division alone contains "more than 15 million visual images, including the most comprehensive international collection of posters in the world, the most comprehensive visual record of the Civil War, and pioneering documentation of America's historic architecture. More than 1.2 million images are accessible on the Prints and Photographs online catalog..."
You can search through 9,491 Prints and Photographs, with a variety that includes photos of President Abraham Lincoln at Antietam, Japanese Ukiyo-e woodblock prints, a photo of Jackie Robinson, and souvenir illustrated cards from the Russian Empire as it existed in 1856.
In their World Digital Library, items are sorted by: Books, Journals, Manuscripts, Maps, Motion Pictures, Newspapers, Prints and Photographs, and Sound Recordings.
To help you navigate the massive amount of information, visit the two Subjects in Digital Collections pages, where items in the Collection are indexed into 132 categories.
To give you some perspective, here's a breakdown of the numbers of items in certain categories:
- 4,019,643 audio materials (discs, tapes, talking books, and other recorded formats)
- 72,512,459 manuscripts
- 5,608,003 maps
- 17,250,956 microforms
- 1,834,690 moving images
- 8,248,463 items of sheet music
- 15,733,020 visual materials, including:
- 14,942,941 photographs
- 109,307 posters
- 680,772 prints and drawings
- 3,449,194 other items (including machine-readable items)
Free-to-use images are sorted into sets on the Free to Use and Reuse Sets page. You can search through sets of WPA posters, World War 1 posters, Japanese Fine Prints, Baseball cards, and more.
A collection of free-to-use posters from 1890s – 1960s features different illustration styles for promoting health, travel, products, liberty bonds, insurance, government programs, and entertainment. The poster collection is a collaboration with Poster House, a new museum "dedicated to presenting the impact, culture, and design of posters, both as historical documents and methods of contemporary visual communication.."
Among the books in the Classic Childrens’ Books page are: In the Court of King Arthur (illustrated by Neil O’Keeffe), Ballad of the Lost Hare by Margaret Sidney, Jack and the Beanstalk, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (illustrations by John Tenniel), Peter Rabbit (illustrated by Harrison Cady), and The Wonderful Wizard of OZ (illustrated by W.W. Denslow).
Copyright and Use
You always need to be mindful of and careful about verifying free-to-use and public domain items you come across. On the LOC's website, pages with free-to-use items feature content that is "either in the public domain, has no known copyright, or has been cleared by the copyright owner for public use."
The Library of Congress outlines the use of its content as follows:
About Copyright and the Collections
Whenever possible, we provide information that we have about copyright owners and related matters in the catalog records, finding aids and other texts that accompany collections. However, the information we have may not be accurate or complete. As a publicly supported institution, we generally do not own the rights to materials in our collections. You should determine for yourself whether or not an item is protected by copyright or in the public domain, and then satisfy any copyright or use restrictions when publishing or distributing materials from our collections. Transmission or reproduction of protected items beyond what is allowed by fair use or other exemptions requires written permission from the copyright holder.
We do not charge permission fees for using any materials, and generally do not grant or deny permission to publish or otherwise distribute them. We do request that anyone linking to our websites present the link in a manner that does not imply that we are making an express or implied endorsement of any good or service provided, and that the link clearly indicates that the user is leaving one site and going to another.
We've written about other sources for free-to-use and public domain images and items. You might want to read about:
 Follow a tutorial for making a patchworked bag with Sashiko topstitching. |  Follow tutorials for how to create traditional Japanese embroidery stitching. |  Explore a library's digitized vintage maps, which you can download for free. |  Learn from a museum textile curator how to best care for your quilts. |
 Learn to make a basket weave pattern quilt from scraps of fabric. |  Sisters Lorna and Jill Watt create amazing yarn bomb installations . |  Ceramic artists create fantastical structures using magnetic clay. |  Learn about a Viking fabric-making technique which pre-dates knitting. |
 Follow a tutorial for making a bilum bag - PNG's traditional fabric. |  Learn to make a pinhole camera; develop paper film with common items. |  Learn about a stretchy fabric made with connected loops. |  Free digitized knitting magazines 1800 - now. |