Here are some suggestions for finding materials that teachers, students, and researchers can use without the need to seek permission:
Open Education Resources (Links to an external site.): Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching and learning materials that you may freely use and reuse at no cost, and without needing to ask permission.
Creative Commons (Links to an external site.) and Creative Commons Australia (Links to an external site.): There are various kinds of Creative Commons licences that places different levels of restrictions on how you can use the specific material. Make sure you know which specific licence you are operating under.
Government: Where possible Australian Government websites are required to publish under open licences such as Creative Commons. For example, CSIRO images (Links to an external site.) use a Creative Commons licence. Users should be aware that these websites could contain 3rd party copyright material.
Flickr (Links to an external site.): Flickr Commons offers images free of copyright restrictions that have been digitised by cultural institutions worldwide.
Clip Art (Links to an external site.): This site uses a Creative Commons Zero 1.0 Public Domain License and is even free for unlimited commercial use.
Open Culture (Links to an external site.): Free text books written by scholars in fields such as Business and Management, Computer Science and Information Systems and Economics and Finance.
Open Textbook Library (Links to an external site.): Free textbooks for subjects such as Accounting and Finance, Business (Human Resources, Management, Marketing), Computer Science and Information Systems and economics.
University of California Presses (Links to an external site.): The University of California Press e-books collection holds books published by UCP (and a select few printed by other academic presses) between 1982-2004. Browse subjects such as Economics and Business and Computer Science.
Wikimedia Commons (Links to an external site.): Online source of images that are free to use.
Internet Archive Digital Library (Links to an external site.): Digital library of free books, movies and sounds.
Wikisource (Links to an external site.): Plain text, HTML versions of public domain books.
OpenStax (Links to an external site.): Peer-reviewed, openly licensed textbooks that are free online, including 89 free books in the business section.
IUniv (Links to an external site.): Free online access to high-quality audio and video recordings of lectures from a wide variety of colleges, universities and organizations from around the world. Has sections on Business and Economics. MITPress: In 2021, the MIT Press announced the launch of Direct to Open (Links to an external site.) (D2O). A innovative, sustainable framework for open access monographs, D2O moves professional and scholarly books from a solely market-based, purchase model where individuals and libraries buy single eBooks, to a collaborative, library-supported open access model.
Merlot (Links to an external site.): Discipline-specific learning materials and learning exercises.
OERLN Textbook Initiative (Links to an external site.): Provides access to engaging and up-to-date global open learning resources.