Image Licensing

The Field Museum releases its collections data under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain waiver. This waiver places our biodiversity collections data in the public domain, and we decline to enforce any intellectual property rights we may have in it. The Museum also makes its multimedia based on collections items and specimens publicly available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC) license, where possible. This allows for the distribution, publication, and remixing of media for any non-commercial purpose, as long as you credit the Field Museum and follow the other requirements of the Creative Commons license, as described in more detail below. Other media distributed by the Field Museum may be protected by copyright, and use of this media may require permission from the Museum or other copyright holder.

Sharing our collections with the world

By adopting the CC0 waiver and CC BY-NC license, we follow the lead of GBIF, Europeana Foundation, Canadensys, VertNet, and Open Data Commons—organizations who invest similarly in data sharing, ethics, and copyright. When using and publishing Field Museum data, please follow our recommended data practices. By doing so you join a global effort to increase the discoverability of data and unlock their potential. You help make the biodiversity data world an easier and more equitable place to work.

With open data, we encourage scientific inquiry and debate by providing resources that foster collaboration and innovation. The Field Museum strives to incorporate the FAIR Guiding Principles for scientific data management and stewardship (FAIR Principles), which are meant to improve Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability, and Reuse of digital assets. We also promote data standards by crediting researchers, reducing the duplication of data, and maximizing transparency and accountability.

Explore the Field Museum's biodiversity data on aggregators like GBIF and VertNet.

Data soverignty and cultural sensitivity

The Field Museum recognizes the implications data governance has on the diverse cultures Field Museum collections represent. We strive to be respectful stewards of this data and to engage with communities regarding how data about their cultures is shared and used. We encourage you to do the same and to look to the CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance (CARE Principles): ensuring a Collective Benefit from the data, providing an Authority to Control such data, and ensuring that such data is managed both Responsibly and Ethically.

The information about our collection that we make available to the public may include information regarding human remains, funerary items, and themes that may be upsetting or disturbing to readers. In some cases, names, terms, and phrases that may be offensive or outdated are used. These have been included for full transparency and reflect the social attitudes and circumstances of the time of which these human remains and cultural items were collected or catalogued, rather than the Field Museum’s current viewpoints.

Media agreement

The Field Museum may require a signed agreement with media creators in order to allow us to use the media in our collections management system. This agreement applies only to visiting researchers accessing, using, and/or borrowing collections items.

Members of culturally affiliated groups, e.g., Native American and Indigenous communities, can amend the terms of the media agreement based on their practices or protocols. For more information, contact the Anthropology team at anthrocollections@fieldmuseum.org.

Artistic work falls outside the agreement, though artists should discuss what they can do with the work once completed by contacting the Field Museum at media@fieldmuseum.org.

Factual data, e.g. measurements, place and date of origin, about collections items and specimens, is exempt from the agreement.

Give credit where credit is due

Cite the data you use. Credit our staff, volunteers, and collaborators for the work they do collecting, digitizing, maintaining, and publishing the information you find online.

Use our preferred citations

We provide citation formats for using datasets, specimens or objects, images, and image stacks. You are welcome to use other citation methods; however, please include a link to the original source.See

Be responsible

Do not use the data or media in any way that is unlawful, unethical, harmful, or misleading. Understand that they are subject to change and may contain errors or sampling biases. Protect the reputation of the data publisher(s) by clearly indicating any changes you make to the data or media.

Respect the license or waiver

Abide by the license or waiver, and do not remove any marks or provide misleading information about the copyright status.

The CC0 designation means the information can be used by anyone for any purpose without the Field Museum’s permission.

The CC BY-NC designation means the media can be distributed, published or remixed for any personal, educational, or non-commercial purposes with credit to the Field Museum. For commercial or any other use of media with this designation, you must obtain permission from the Field Museum using the image licensing request form above.

For all other questions about licensing, contact media@fieldmuseum.org.

Share what you find

Let us know if you use Field Museum data and media. If you have comments about the data or media, notice errors, or want more information, contact the data publisher(s). This information is included in the dataset metadata and online.

Join in

We currently only publish data and media about Field Museum collections. If you wish to publish your data under the same code of openness, then we encourage you to join one of the growing communities of data aggregators.