Student Web Search

School Library Encyclopedias & Databases

For consistently reliable and appropriate sources of information, students should visit the webpages for their school libraries, where they will find links to Britannica School, an online encyclopedia ideally suited for elementary and junior high students, and/or the wide selection of Gale and other reference databases, which are freely available to all teachers and students from Internet-enabled devices in our schools. Please see the library staff for usernames and passwords required when using the sources from home.

Appropriate Images

Whenever possible, students should use their own images or original artwork for student projects. When students need to find other images, they should always use sites that will return images that are safe, appropriate, and copyright-friendly. In other words, they shouldn't just "Google it."

In addition to Britannica School and the Gale databases, students can use the following sites, which will return thousands of high quality, safe images that can be used without permission for educational purposes:

• Pixabay

• Unsplash Photos

• Pics4Learning

• OpenClipArt

• MorgueFile

Creative Commons was created as an alternative to restrictive copyright laws, and allows authors and creators of images, animations, music, and more to license their works for use. Students can use Creative Commons to search for images and other content that can be re-used, sometimes without attribution (although it's important to check the licensing terms). A Creative Commons search can be filtered by type of use and the search tool, which can include Google, Flikr, Open Clip Art Library, Pixabay, Sound Cloud, and more.