The SJR State Library licenses hundreds of thousands of articles, eBooks, poems, plays, streaming videos, audio, and images for academic use by College employees and currently registered students. The Library does this by purchasing annual subscriptions to numerous digital platforms. Search the Library's catalog and databases to access licensed works.
Of course, copyright law still applies to works licensed by the Library - you can't alter them and/or claim them as your own, you can't sell them, you can't make them freely available online, etc. But you do not have to ask the owner permission to use them for academic purposes within the scope of copyright law and fair use. You do, also, need to provide attribution(s) when using them as sources.
creativecommons.org allows creators to freely license their work to varying degrees and provides everyone a search engine to find Creative Commons licensed materials.
Watch Wanna Work Together? from Creative Commons to understand how Creative Commons (CC) licenses work.
There are 6 types of Creative Commons licenses - read about them and understand how to properly attribute the use of CC licensed works. Each license varies by the level of permissions it grants; as the web site explains, "From the reuser’s perspective, the presence of a Creative Commons license on a copyrighted work answers the question, “What can I do with this work?”"
Creative Commons. (n.d.) About CC licenses. https://creativecommons.org/about/cclicenses/
U.S. Copyright Office. (n.d.) What is copyright? https://www.copyright.gov/what-is-copyright/