Attributions and Citations in Blog Posts

A CREATIVE COMMONS PHOTO REQUIRES AN ATTRIBUTION

CREATIVE COMMONS is a great way to find a photo for a general person, place, thing, or idea (think common noun) for a blog post, but once you’ve found the photo you want, you must attribute the photographer to give credit to his work when you use it in your post and you must link back to the photo in his or her photo stream, which contains the creative commons licensing information for that photo.  There are FlickrCC attribution tools that “stamp” a photo with attribution info, but the Creative Commons licensing law says that there must also be a link to the photographer’s work in the photo stream as well as a link to the licensing info, and that is where many of these tools fall short.

The best tool I’ve found for finding a Creative Commons photo with proper attribution LINKS is Photo Pin:

www.photopin.com

Type in your search term, such as “sunset,” and when you’ve selected your photo, choose the download size you want.  The photo will save to your download folder.  Then copy and save the HTML code for the photo attribution.

Notice that as you are writing any blog post, the text box has two tabs in the upper right corner:  Visual and HTML.  Once the photo is uploaded to your post, you’ll want to click on the HTML tab to then paste in the HTML attribution code below your photo or at the bottom of your blog post.  When you hit the publish button, the code will translate into an easily readable, clickable attribution for your photo!  It will look like this:

 

photo credit: Theophilos via photopin cc

 

You can also go to Flickr Creative Commons yourself, do your own search, and create your own accreditation and link:

http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/

Find a photo you like and click on it.   Double check the licensing info (found towards the bottom of the column on the right…is it available for your use?)   Copy and save the URL of the photo stream and make note of the photographer’s name, because you’ll need the information for the attribution.  If no real name is given, you’ll attribute the photo to the username.  Then right click on the photo to download the size you want.

Once you’ve uploaded the photo, you’ll create the link back to the photostream, which also contains the details of  licensing information.  Create the link like you would any other link in the text box, except that the title of the link will read like an attribution. See the example below:

 

Photo Credit : “Sunset” by John Fowler via FlickrCC

 

 

A GOOGLE IMAGE REQUIRES A CITATION

GOOGLE  is a great way to find a photo for a specific person, event, or topic (think proper noun) for a blog post, but once you’ve found the photo you want, you must cite the source of the photo when you use it in your post.  Google is not the source!  It is only the search engine that helped you find the photo you want.  Once you click on the photo, RIGHT CLICK on it and you’ll be able to find the source information.

You can create the citation using http://easybib.com/cite/form/photo for an actual photograph, or http://easybib.com/cite/form/image for a still image taken from a movie, video, football game, etc. ( These types of citations are found under the EasyBib tab that says “All 59 Options”.)

If you don’t want to use EasyBib, it’s pretty simple to create the citation yourself by including the following information:

  • Image creator’s last name, first name, if available, or page author’s name if available, followed by a period and a space
  • Title of image followed by a period, in quotation marks. If no title, describe the image briefly within quotation marks (Ex:  “Harry Potter confronts Voldemort.”)
  • Descriptive word (photo, digital image, map, cartoon, drawing, etc,) followed by a period and a space
  • Website title in italics, followed by a space
  • Date image was published in DD Mo. YYYY format followed by a period
  • Date image was viewed in DD Mo. YYYY format followed by a space
  • Web address in angle brackets, followed by a period

examples:
Photo Credit:  Smythe, Eric. “Justin Bieber.” Photo. People.com. 14 Nov. 2011.  27 Sep. 2012  <www.people.com>.

Image Credit:  Warner Bros. Pictures.  “Harry Potter confronts Voldemort.”  Digital image .  USAToday.net.  27 Apr. 2011  <www.usatoday.net>.

 

 

 

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