In case you missed this news item in February, I decided to do a quick blog post about it. Those of us creating a lot of eLearning content (and training materials in general) are always looking for inexpensive–or better, FREE–stock images to enliven our learning content. True, the new Articulate 360 Suite includes a Content Library with some decent images (more on 360 in another post), and Adobe’s package also offers a stock image option–though a lot of that one seems to come with a price tag. Death to the Stock Photo started out strong, but for me their image bundles have grown less interesting lately. Likewise for Unsplash–sure, the photos are often swell, but how many 8mb mountain landscape shots do we need in corporate eLearning?
Sometimes help comes from unexpected places. In this case, it comes from NYC’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. In February the museum announced it was making a treasure trove of copyright free (or copyright waived) images available to the public on their web site, for FREE. Another reason to love that venerable institution (and seriously, if you haven’t ever been, it’s the El Dorado of art, and you really should spend a few hours there next time you’re in town).
To check out what’s available, visit their Collection and then check the box for “Public Domain Artworks” from the list of filters on the left. Once you’ve done that, select other filters on the left to further narrow the results, browse to your heart’s content, and download what you need for your project. The museum will continue adding images to this free databank over time.
Will you find lots of images of corporate businesspeople? Well, no. But if you’re creating a course with a metaphor, you could make great use of some classical art–and “class up” your learning content in the process!