The copyright of images is complicated.  Photographs of artistic works involve two separate copyrights: the artistic work itself and the photograph of it.  It is often difficult to trace the copyright owner of photographs but in UK law such ‘orphan works’ are still considered to be under copyright.  If you manage to contact the copyright owner and obtain permission you will usually need to negotiate separately for every further use of the image.  However, there are ways to make legal use of images without the need to seek individual permissions.

Under the terms of the Copyright Licensing Agency HE Licence you may photocopy images in books or scan and add them to SurreyLearn within the licence’s restrictions.

There are also a number of specialist websites which offer copyright cleared images for educational purposes.  You can usually – check the site’s terms and conditions – print and download these images and post them to access-restricted, password-protected websites but not to unrestricted sites on the open web.  Here are some good starting points:

• JISC Digital Media: the website offers an online tutorial on finding a vast range of copyright-free images for use in teaching and learning, plus a detailed written guide on Finding Video, Audio & Images Online.
• The Copyright Friendly Wiki has an extensive list of sources of copyright-free images.