Guide to Citations & Copyright

This guide covers the importance of both citations and copyright, especially as they pertain to using media on your COPLACDigital sites.

Jump to Copyright

CITATIONS

COPLACDigital sites are, first and foremost, works of public scholarship. So, as with any academic work, your site must include full citations for all of your sources—including digital (online) and archival media.

A few things to keep in mind:

If you are using an image (or other piece of media) for aesthetic rather than analytical reasons, you still need to provide a citation for it.
If the media is in the public domain, or if the license does not require attribution, you still need to provide a citation for it.
If you have obtained permission from the media owner to use the media on your site, you still need to provide a citation for it.

Digital/Online Media

Providing sufficient information in media citations can be tricky, and not all citation styles address this issue well. Best practices for online media citations include providing information about the:

Author/Creator
Date published/created
Title of media
ID of media (if applicable—the ID is typically a string of letters and numbers included in the URL)
Type/Format of media (e.g., JPEG, MP3, YouTube video, etc.)
Link to the original source of the media
Copyright/license, including a link to this information
Modifications you have made to the piece of media (e.g., cropping an image)

The more information you can provide the better. Anyone should be able to look at the citation and find the original source of the media on their own. Additionally, they should be able to look at the citation and easily find the copyright/licensing information.

Archival Media

The above guidelines also hold true for archival media—it is not enough to say "Courtesy of X University Archives." While that may be an appropriate credit for the archival media, it is not an appropriate citation. Citations for archival media should, again, provide as much as information as possible so that anyone could go to the archive and find the source.

Archival media citations should include information about the:

Author/creator
Date published/created
Title of media
ID of media (typically given when the archive digitizes the media, or it could be an accession number—check with the archivist if you aren't sure how to find this information)
Physical type/format of media (e.g., black and white photograph, color photograph, etc.)
Collection and location information (box number, folder number, page number [if applicable], etc.)
Archive location information (e.g., Simpson Library, University of Mary Washington, Fredericksburg, VA)

Archival Media in a Digital Collection

Many archives have some of their collections available online now, and these digital collections are great resources for COPLACDigital projects. Citations for these media sources can be complex, due to the media having a physical and digital form. Combining the above guidelines (archival media and digital/online media) will provide a suitable citation.

For example, an acceptable citation for the below image would be:

“Faculty and Student Body State Normal School Fredericksburg Virginia April 27 1916,” Bulletin of the State Normal School for Women, Fredericksburg, VA: Sixth Annual Catalogue, June 1917, front matter, Special Collections and University Archives, Simpson Library, University of Mary Washington, https://archive.org/stream/bulletinofstaten32univ#page/n3 (accessed March 29, 2016). Cropped from original. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0.

The Bottom Line

Provide full, academic citations for ALL of your sources.

COPYRIGHT

As you locate and cite media for your COPLACDigital projects, it's very important to keep copyright limitations and media usage in mind. Just because an image, video, etc. is available online does not mean that you are free to use it. Best practice for using online media in your projects is:

Go to the original source of the media. (Google Images is not an original source.)
Check the original source for copyright and licensing information. Where this information is will vary depending on the source.
- Do not use:
  1. Media that is marked as "All rights reserved"
  2. Media lacking licensing information from a site with a designated copyright
- Seek permissions from the media/site owner if copyright/licensing information is missing or unclear.
Provide a citiation, regardless of attribution requirements or owner permissions.

Licenses that Allow Reuse

Some of the most common licenses you'll see on websites and media are those from Creative Commons. Creative Commons licenses allow almost anyone to share their work online while also protecting their ownership of the work and regulating how it can be used by others. Understanding the different conditions of Creative Commons licenses will help you determine how you can reuse CC-licensed media:

Attribution (BY) — You must give credit the way the owner/creator requests. For CC this typically means: you must give credit to the creator, you must link to the CC license, and you must indicate if you made any changes to it.
Share-Alike (SA) — You can modify the original work, but you must redistribute it under the same terms as the original work.
NonCommercial (NC) — You cannot use the work for commercial purposes.
NoDerivatives (ND) — You cannot modify the original work.

Note that all CC licenses require attribution, regardless of the other three conditions, so all CC-licensed works that you use must include a link to the license in the citation.

Creative Commons has a built-in search function that is very useful for finding online media that's available for use by others. Search the Creative Commons here.

Works in the Public Domain

There are several different reasons why a work may be in the public domain (expired copyright, created by a government agency, etc.), and these works can be great sources for your websites. However, even though a work is in the public domain and therefore free to use, you must still include a citation a for it. The citation should clearly indicate that the work is in the public domain.

Below, we'll cover a few common sources of online media and how you can check each of them for usage restrictions.

Google Images

Google Images should not be the main source that you draw images from, but it can be a good starting place. In order to find images that you will more than likely be able to use, you should take a couple extra steps while using Google's Image Search.

First, before you execute a search, open up the additional "Tools" for searching. You'll find that option below the search bar on the right.

From there, find the "Usage Rights" option in the new menu bar below the search box:

This search tool will allow you to filter your image search results so that you're more likely to find images you can use. The first option ("Not filtered by license type") is the only one that you should not use.

If you find a promising image in your search, remember that you should not stop here! You need to go to the original source for the image, which you can easily do by choosing the "Visit" option from the image result. Once you get to the original source, verify that it is an image that you can use on your website.

Wikimedia Commons

While Wikimedia Commons is an acceptable source to draw images from, you need to check the media's information to make sure you can use it. (As is the case with Google Images, just because an image is available on Wikimedia Commons does not mean you are free to use it.)

Wikimedia Commons is good about providing copyright and licensing information, which you can find by clicking on your desired image. This action will bring up the image in a media viewer, and from there you should click on the blue "More Details" button in the lower right-hand corner.

The file details page will also give you other information to help in the construction of your image citation (provided that the image is not under copyright).

Flickr

Flickr is another popular source of images that, like Google Images and Wikimedia Commons, requires checking usage restrictions. When you're searching through photographs on Flickr, make sure that you are filtering by license type. The option to filter by license type is in the upper left-hand corner of the search screen:

By default, Flickr is set to show you photographs with any license—which means that you will see a lot of photos with "All Rights Reserved," meaning you can't use the photo without getting permission from the owner. The option to search "All Creative Commons" licenses is a good place to start.

When you find a photo you'd like to use, make sure you look at the information below the photo for license details. License information appears below the date the photograph was taken and links directly to the photo's Creative Commons license (which you should include in your citation).

For example, "Some rights reserved" in the Flickr photo information, pictured above, is a link to the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 generic license, meaning you could use that particular photograph as long as you: gave proper attribution (including a link to the license), were not using it for commercial purposes, and did not "remix, transform, or build upon" the photo.

Pixabay & Unsplash

Pixabay and Unsplash are both popular sites for public domain (copyright-free) images. However, images from these sites still need citations, and the citation should include information about it being in the public domain.

Images from Pixabay are licensed under CC0 (Creative Commons' Public Domain dedication) and should be designated as such in the citation.
- Example: Pasja1000 (Pixabay user), "[Wildflowers]," Photo ID 3571119, July 8, 2018, JPEG image, https://pixabay.com/photo-3571119/ (accessed August 15, 2018). CC0 (Public Domain).
Images from Unsplash are free under the "Unsplash License." You should include a link to that licensing information in the citation.
- Example: Jeremy Bishop, "Abandoned," August 15, 2018, JPEG image, https://unsplash.com/photos/tsgXVFJH9CI (accessed August 15, 2018). Unsplash License.

YouTube

If you choose to embed videos from YouTube in your site, look at the video's full information: click "Show More" underneath the video description, and you should see a line with licensing information. Most videos are licensed under the Standard YouTube License or under a Creative Commons attribution license, but you may come across videos with All Rights Reserved to their owners. Make sure any video(s) you use has either a Standard YouTube License or Creative Commons Attribution license. As always, include this information in your video citation.