About
The Resource
The Creative Commons Digital Asset Finder is a search interface for Wikimedia Commons — a repository of over 100 million freely reusable media files operated by the Wikimedia Foundation. It is designed for researchers, educators, and cultural heritage practitioners who need openly licensed media with full rights and descriptive metadata.
Supported media types include images, audio recordings, and video. All assets carry Creative Commons or equivalent open licenses. Each result surfaces a complete Dublin Core metadata record — including creator, rights, license, format, extent, and spatial coverage where available.
Data is retrieved live from Wikimedia Commons. No data is stored locally; results always reflect the current state of the repository.
Metadata Standard — Dublin Core
Each asset record is presented using the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI) terms, the internationally recognised standard for interoperable resource description used by libraries, archives, and museums worldwide.
The following terms are surfaced where data is available:
| Term | Namespace | Source in Record |
|---|---|---|
| Title | dc:title | ObjectName / filename |
| Creator | dc:creator | Artist field |
| Contributor | dc:contributor | Credit field |
| Description | dc:description | ImageDescription |
| Subject | dc:subject | Wikimedia categories |
| Date | dc:date | DateTimeOriginal |
| Modified | dcterms:modified | DateTime (file) |
| Type | dc:type | DCMI Type Vocabulary |
| Format | dc:format | MIME type |
| Medium | dcterms:medium | Derived from MIME type |
| Extent | dcterms:extent | Dimensions + file size |
| Publisher | dc:publisher | Wikimedia Commons |
| Source | dc:source | Asset page URL |
| Identifier | dc:identifier | Wikimedia page ID |
| Language | dc:language | Language field |
| Spatial Coverage | dcterms:spatial | GPS coordinates |
| Rights | dc:rights | UsageTerms / license name |
| License | dcterms:license | LicenseUrl |
| Access Rights | dcterms:accessRights | Attribution / permissions |
Type values follow the DCMI Type Vocabulary: Image, Sound, and MovingImage.