# Mapping Resources > Reference Material >  The Smithsonian Collection

## Redrobes

I was browsing the tech news sites when there was a post about how the Smithsonian Museum had released many millions of images. Knowing that all US government material is released without copyright I thought that there was a good chance that some of the museum images might be. But it looks like the majority of them are CC0 that is to say copyright free and you can do whatever you like with them.

Since this is a museum and one of the largest in the world I looked for various items and they have huge numbers of images of the sorts of stuff that would be useful to make top down icons. Take this one for example:

https://www.si.edu/search/collection...ia_usage%3ACC0

A search for "Plates" with the open content ticked. 10700 plate images all nicely photographed with backgrounds that you can clip out and make plate icons from. I looked for daggers and other swords and there are many. So I think this is a great resource to obtain some icon material.

https://www.si.edu

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## KMAlexander

It's REALLY awesome to see the Smithsonian do this, and I can't wait to see how it fuels artists going forward. Lots of opportunities to use this content in a variety of ways.

Along with the Smithsonian, there's a bunch of other galleries and museums doing this as well:

*NYPL Digital Collection
*
*The Met*

*Rijks Museum*

*Art Institute of Chicago*

In some cases you might need to select "public domain" on the searches.

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## Tiana

It's tragic that so many of these are not top-down, just the popular angle (plates however, are definitely reusable for our purposes). This guy, for example, is awesome. https://www.artic.edu/artworks/91377...d-human-figure I love how modern that art is and yet so old. I could lose a lot of time in these galleries if I'm not careful.

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## cliftonprince

I've always been interested in finding a good set of resources for "the best real-world" type maps. I am sure the Smithsonian has plenty, though it's hard to find them; I like Schiaparelli's mapping of Mars from 1877 https://www.google.com/search?q=schi...w=1536&bih=750 , I notice one recent finished-map thread says it's "loyal imitation of the style of the 1922 type topographical map of France" https://cartographersguild.com/showthread.php?t=47210 , etc.. Not sure if there's a good collection of similar such links here at the Guild.

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## Feathered fox ink

To add to the museum that make some of their pieces available, there's Gallica's website in France (French National Library) with a specific page for maps.

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