Middle School Library: Finding Images, Music and Films

Creative Commons - Best practices for attribution

You can use CC-licensed materials as long as you follow the license conditions. One condition of all CC licenses is attribution. Here are some good (and not so good) examples of attribution.

If you use images, such as photographs or clipart, in your presentation, you should also credit the source of the image. Do not reproduce images without permission. See the box "Creative Commons and Royalty-Free Images" in this guide to find sources for images that are "public use".

Use the acronym TASL to remember how to attribute images:

T - Title/Description

A - Author or creator

S - Source & date (Name of the website the image is from)

L - License or location (Creative Commons license or URL)

This is a great attribution

"Satellites See Unprecedented Greenland Ice Sheet Surface Melt" by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center is licensed under CC by 2.0

Title: Satellites See Unprecedented Greenland Ice Sheet Surface Melt 
Author: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Source: Flickr (linked in title) 
License: CC by 2.0

Most importantly, this attribution reasonably includes all the relevant information provided by the author.

This is an incorrect attribution

Photo: Creative Commons

Let’s go through TASL:

Title? Title of the image is not noted

Author? Author is not noted (It is a common mistake to attribute CC-licensed photos to CC, but Creative Commons is not the author!)

Source? No link to the original source

License? There is no mention of a license nor a link to the license. "Creative Commons" is the name of an organization; it does not equate to any of the licenses maintained by the Creative Commons.