Using the multimedia library

Guidelines and instructions on finding and using images, audio, and video in the LEARN NC multimedia library.

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Related pages

• Media submission guidelines: LEARN NC welcomes submissions of images, audio, and video of educational value for our Multimedia Library,...
• LEARN NC: Terms of Use: LEARN NC makes available its articles, lesson plans, and other original education resources free of charge via the World Wide Web to educators and students worldwide. These policies explain the terms of use that apply to all content published by LEARN NC.
• Teaching students about the Creative Commons: Technology makes stealing easy, but it makes sharing just as easy. The Creative Commons will let your students innovate in and out of the classroom without having to worry about copyright violations.

Related topics

• Learn more about Creative Commons, LEARN NC, audio, copyright, illustrations, images, maps, multimedia, photographs, and videos.

Legal

Finding multimedia with tags

When you search the multimedia library, you’re searching a set of tags we’ve assigned to the various images, audio, and video files. Unlike pages of text, obviously you can’t search the content of an image itself — so if we want people to be able to find a photograph of a house by the ocean, we assign it the tags “house,” “ocean,” and maybe “beach” as well. So tags are simply keywords or finding aids for multimedia files.

What we tag

Typically, we tag an image with words or phrases describing the primary content of the image. We also tag the location (such as “Cape Hatteras” and “North Carolina”) and the names of any people appearing in a photograph, if appropriate. If it’s a map, we tag the names of the major regions or countries shown. We may also tag the primary topic or subject of an image, particularly if the image is an illustration, chart, or graph.

Tag clouds

The “tag cloud” on the front page of the multimedia library is a weighted list of tags. Larger font size on a given tag indicate that more images are tagged with that word or phrase. (As you might expect, we have a lot of images tagged with “North Carolina.”) You can use this list alphabetically, or look at the most common tags first.

Finding related images

When you look at the catalog record for an image or other multimedia file, you’ll see in the sidebar a heading “Related Images.” These are images that share the most tags with the image you’re viewing. In many cases, the similarity will be obvious at a glance; in other cases, you’ll have to read the image description to see the similarity.

Multimedia records

On the catalog record for an image, you’ll find a range of information designed to help you make use of the image in teaching and learning.

Time and place

Under the heading “About the image” in the sidebar you’ll see basic information about the image, including the date on which it was created and its location, if appropriate.

Credit and licensing

The first heading in the sidebar, “Credit,” tells you who created the image and how you may use it. Most of our images are licensed under a Creative Commons license, which permits anyone to use the image for any noncommercial purpose so long as they attribute it to its creator. If you alter the image or make derivative works, you must agree to license them in the same manner. In short, if an image bears this logo:

you are free to use it for any normal classroom use!

If you don’t see that logo, the licensing information will tell you how you can use it. If the image is in the public domain, you can use it however you wish; if it says “All Rights Reserved” you should treat it just as you would any other image you find on the web. (See our article about fair use for more information.

Description

Many of our images have detailed descriptions that provide not only a literal description of the content of the image (for accessibility purposes) but also historical, cultural, or scientific context. The description appears as text directly beneath the image.

See this image in context

If the image has been used in a slideshow or other larger web resource, you’ll see a heading in the sidebar “See this image in context.” The links will take you directly to the page of the resource on which the image was used, so that you can learn more about it and its content or subject.

Learn more

You can “learn more” about the subjects of an image by using the links under that heading in the sidebar. This section lists the tags we’ve assigned to the image — first, as links to a search of the multimedia library, and then as links to searches of the entire LEARN NC website.

Other sizes/versions

If the image is available in various sizes or formats, you’ll see them linked under the image. (Numbers, in relation to images, refer to pixels.)