The Library of Congress is a great place to find historical pictures, drawings, and maps to use in lesson plans and classroom projects. Finding things on the Library of Congress’ website isn’t always easy if you only use the search function. But the LOC’s Free to Use and Reuse Sets make it much easier to find thematically arranged collections of image and drawings that you can download and use for free.

Recently, the Library of Congress’ blog featured the Free to Use and Reuse collection about athletes. This collection includes pictures of some famous athletes like Jackie Robinson and some not-so-famous, but still remarkable athletes. The collection also contains historical images of unnamed athletes competing in archery, skiing, equestrian, boxing, fencing, and more. 

Applications for Education
One of the things that I’ve always appreciated about these free to use and reuse collections is that most of the pictures include some kind of description that gives you a little bit of information about what’s seen in the image. That little bit of information can be used to create a little research prompt for students. Of course, these collections are also great for just finding images to use in classroom projects without worrying about copyright restrictions.

For more places to find free images and other media for classroom projects, take a look at my updated guide to finding media for classroom projects.