Multimedia Source Material

Attribution Best Practices

Attribution Examples

Here are four different, but equally correct, ways to attribute this photo to its creator:

"Untitled" By Matt Morse (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons.

Matt Morse's "Untitled." (Photo).  

 Untitled by Matt Morse.

"Untitled." By Matt Morse (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons. Available at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Michigan_City_Lighthouse.jpg

 

When possible, provide a credit list of material you used that adheres to best practices. Doing so allows not only your material, but the materials you attribute, to be found by search engines and other web discovery tools. Make the Author, Source, and License into links the user can follow.

• Example: This video features "EVERY song from Nickelodeon's School of Rock TV series (ft. Originals & Covers)" by Nick Rewind, available under a Creative Commons Attribution license (reuse allowed).

You can also mention the source in the credits within the media itself. Crediting videos can be a simple list of the materials used with their associated licenses in a screen at the end of a video. For audio, it can be a verbal recitation of credits at the end of the recording.

• Video example 1: "Science Commons" by Jesse Dylan - see attribution starting at 1:52
• Video example 2: "Video Editing and Shot Techniques: Study of jump cuts, match cuts and cutaways " video by New Media Rights - see attribution starting at 3:21
• Audio example: "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom" by Cory Doctorow read aloud. Mastered by John Taylor Williams - listen to attribution starting at 17:08

Citing Sources with Footnotes

When citing sources online, it is best to link to those sources directly whenever possible. For an in-text citation, use a superscript number in brackets that matches a footnote at the bottom of the page showing the full citation. Then make sure that the link in your citation is a hyperlink to the original source. For example:

The Creative Commons license is the most widely used licensing framework internationally used for OER.^[20]

Full citation in footnote:

20. Miao, Fengchun, et al. Open Educational Resources: Policy, Costs, Transformation. E-book, UNESDOC, 2016. unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000244365. Accessed 23 Jan. 2020.

For more examples of how in-text citations should look, see Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_graphics

For more information on how to cite sources, see the Citation Styles box.

Need More Help?

These great websites provide a lot of examples and additional resources on multiple citation styles. 

	Linscheid Library Citation Styles Guide
	Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL)