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Copyright & Images: Citation for Images

Copyright & the Digital World; Rules, Risk and Creativity Copyright implications arise whenever anyone creates, interacts with or shares content online with others.

Citation Management Tools

Images/Photographs Reference:

Photographer/Creator Last name, Initial(s). (Year) Title of image/photograph [Photograph/Image]. Place of publication: Publisher.

Example: O’Meara, S. (2014) Orchid [Photograph]. Co. Clare: Collins Press.

In-Text-Citation:

 Author(s) Last name (Year)  (Authors(s) Last name, Year)

Example:  O’Meara (2014) shows a perfect example of the epipactis atrorubens.  The velvety red of the epipactis atrorubens is demonstrated in the photo displayed (O’Meara, 2014).

Images/Photographs (Online) Reference:

Photographer/Creator Last name, Initial(s). (Year). Title of image/photograph. Available at: URL [Accessed 31 January 2014]. Example: O’Meara, S. (2014) Orchid. Available at: www.theburrenorchidcollection.ie [Accessed 3 February 2014].

In-Text-Citation: As detailed for Images/Photographs above.

Harvard Referencing for Images

Citation management tools

Citation management tools help you manage your research, collect and cite sources, organize and store your PDFs, and create bibliographies in a variety of citation styles.  Each one has its strengths and weaknesses, but all are easier than doing it by hand!

  1. Zotero: Free software that keeps copies of what you find on the web, permits tagging, notation, full text searching of your library of resources, works with Word, and has a free web backup service. Zotero is available as a stand-alone application that syncs with Chrome and Safari, or as a bookmarklet for mobile browsers.
  2. RefWorks - web-based and free for UC Berkeley users. It allows you to create your own database by importing references and using them for footnotes and bibliographies, then works with Word to help you format references and a bibliography for your paper. Use the RefWorks New User Form to sign up.
  3. EndNote: Desktop software for managing your references and formatting bibliographies. 

Tip: After creating a bibliography with a citation management tool, it's always good to double check the formatting; sometimes the software doesn't get it quite right.

In general, the following details are necessary for any image citation, no matter which citation style you are using:

  • The title of the image, if applicable. For example, this could be the title of the artwork or, if it's a media image, the original caption.
  • The name of the image's creator.
  • The repository of the image. This is the institution that owns the original: the museum, the library, the archive, the individual, etc.
  • The source. This could be a database such as ARTstor, a Web site, a book, etc.
  • The date you accessed the image. This is most important for Web sources, which can be quite ephemeral.