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Image Resources: Citation & Copyright

Access digital image collections that have been organized according to subject as well as information about how to use images in your work and guidelines for formatting proper image citations.

Citing Image Sources

Whether you are using them in a paper, Power Point presentation, Prezi, or video, you must always provide a citation for your images, just as you would any other source.  Image citations are usually provided in captions, which can be reproduced in a list of illustrations or an appendix to your paper.  Sometimes, images are also cited in bibliographies and notes.  

The format of your citation will vary depending on the citation style that you have chosen to use, but it will most likely include the following information:

  • Artist's / Creator's name
  • Title of the work
  • Date the work was created
  • Current location of the work (museum or other repository)
  • Place that the work was created
  • Dimensions of the work
  • Material / Medium (oil on canvas, woodcut, etc)
  • Information about the source that you acquired the image from (if the source is a website, this information should include the URL)

Most citation style manuals will contain information about how to properly cite images. To access Bucknell's citation guide information, click here.  For examples of image citations in MLA, Chicago, and APA format, take a look at the following resources: 

Why and When to Cite Your Sources

Whenever you do research to write a paper or create a project, it is essential that you document the sources that you used.  This video explains why, and gives you some information on how to get started. 

If you need further assistance, and for information about various citation styles, take a look at Bucknell's Citation Guides

If you need information about citing sources in the Chicago style, take a look at the Chicago Manual of Style Online (16th Edition).

Copyright Information

Individuals are widely responsible for not only finding the images used in their published works but also for securing copyright permission to use them.  Here is the Library & IT guide to copyright information along with other copyright information.