Open Clip Art Library

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Examples of clip art from the Open Clip Art Library

The Open Clip Art Library project aims to create a collection of vector clip art that is free content.^[1] The project was started in early 2004 by Inkscape developers Jon Phillips and Bryce Harrington to collect designs of flags from all around the world, having been inspired by the efforts to create collection of flags created by users of vector graphics software Sodipodi. It progressed very well and the project goals were extended to generic clipart, and as of October 2007 it incorporated over 10,000 images from over 500 artists, and offers the entire collection for free download. All images have been dedicated to the public domain by their contributors. They are stored in Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) format, often with thumbnails in Portable Network Graphics (PNG) format.

To manage such a huge collection of different pictures, the project has adopted Creative Commons' ccHost software for managing the clipart collection. ^[2]

Some Linux-distributions, including Mandriva and Ubuntu, include much of the Open Clip Art Library collection, packaged as svg, png or open office format files.^[3] These distributions are based on the 2005 pre-ccHost release, as it has been impossible to extract the full set of images from the ccHost software.