Images on a website play a huge role in keeping a visitor interested in a website. Images can be stills or videos. The videos can be silent or have audio. Unless the site author is sure that the images are royalty free, credit should be given to the image source.

It should be noted that, to avoid having to cite all examples, I have used only examples from my own content.

The picture may be copyrighted, but the image in the picture may be as well. For example, Motif #1 in Rockport, MA ,an old fishing shack at the end of a jetty, is a copyrighted image. Theoretically, thousands of tourists that snap pictures of that old shack have infringed on the copyright. The picture and the image within the picture may both need to be credited.

There are several ways to gain permission to use a picture.

1. Use only pictures you have taken yourself.

2. Go to a site like pixaby.com to pay for permission to use their stock of pictures.

3. Write to the owner of a picture to ask for permission.

Once permission has been given, the source should be identified with as much detail as possible. Generally, the broadest identification category is listed first.

Name of parent company>name of publication>name of article>date publication.

This picture was not attached to an article.

Permission had been granted by mollysfund.org to use any pictures from their site. In this case, the image title was used for identification as well as the caption and the source.

The source URL was embedded in the image.

Mollysfund.org found value in having their images, and url on a variety of websites.

Giving proper credit for pictures, whether snipped online, downloaded from a source or copied from a book or periodical, is essential given current copyright laws. Whenever possible, permission to use images should be obtained from the source.

The next section of this training, will review the use of footnotes.