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Cite Your Sources: Image sources and labelling (including graphs, charts, and other visuals)

This page has lots of resources to help you create citations for your research assignments.

Image sources recommended for education

The term “public domain” refers to creative materials that are not protected by intellectual property laws such as copyright, trademark, or patent laws. The public owns these works, not an individual author or artist. Anyone can use a public domain work without obtaining permission, but no one can ever own it. 
 

Whether you are a student or a teacher, you should start your image search at one of the following sites which offers public domain images that do not require citation. Each of these sites includes high-resolution images that can be freely downloaded and used for education purposes. No watermark will appear on an image.


All blurbs are directly taken from the site's "About" page of FAQ.

Pexels: Pexels provides high quality and completely free stock photos licensed under the Pexels license. All photos are nicely tagged, searchable and also easy to discover through our discover pages.

Photos For Class: Access safe images that are available to be used in the classroom and for educational purposes. Note that not all images are public domain, however, Photos For Class includes citation information with each downloaded image.

Pics4Learning: Pics4Learning is a curated image library that is safe and free for education. Teachers and students can use the copyright-friendly photos and illustrations for classroom projects, web sites, videos, portfolios, or any other projects in an educational setting.

Pixabay: Pixabay is a vibrant community of creatives, sharing copyright free images, illustrations, videos and music. All contents are released under the Pixabay License, which makes them safe to use without asking for permission or giving credit to the artist - even for commercial purposes.

Unsplash: Unsplash grants you an irrevocable, nonexclusive, worldwide copyright license to download, copy, modify, distribute, perform, and use photos from Unsplash for free, including for commercial purposes, without permission from or attributing the photographer or Unsplash. This license does not include the right to compile photos from Unsplash to replicate a similar or competing service. Unsplash is also integrated with Google making it easy to include their images in your presentations. No attribution is required but it is appreciated. 

Citing artwork from a book

When you refer to a photographic reproduction of an artwork, the citation is made up of two parts:

  • Part 1: Lists the original artist's name, the name of the work, and the date the work was created. 
  • Part 2: Cites where you found the reproduction of the work such as a book. The example below is for an image taken from a book with a single author. 

Artist's Last Name, First Name. Title of Work: Subtitle if Any. Year, Location of Work. Book Title, by Author's Last Name, First Name, Publisher Name often shortened, Year of publication, p. number.

Works Cited List Example  

Da Vinci, Leonardo. Last Supper. 1498, Santa Maria della Grazie, Milan. Great Paintings of the Western World, by Gallup, Alison, et al., Barnes & Noble, 1998, p. 223. 

In-Text Citation Example

(Author's Last Name Page Number)

Example: (Da Vinci 223)

If you place the artwork in your paper, you must label the figure. The caption should be the Works Cited list citation for the source the figure was found in. For example, if it was found in a book, cite the book. 

Label your figures starting at 1.

Information about the figure (the caption) is placed directly below the image in your assignment.

Example:

Yellow printed skirt by designer Annakiki. Faces on skirt.

Fig. 1. Da Vinci, Leonardo. Last Supper. 1498, Santa Maria della Grazie, Milan. Great Paintings of the Western World, by Gallup, Alison, et al., Barnes & Noble, 1998, p. 223. 

Labelling and citing an image or photo

An inserted photo, image, graph or chart is called a figure. Each figure must have a caption directly below the photo/image/graph/chart in your assignment. The caption follows this format:

Fig. X. Description of the figure from: Citation cue for source so your reader can find it in your
Works Cited (e.g. a website, a magazine article) or the complete citation if you only refer to the
image one time.

  Note: If you have more than one figure in your assignment, label your figures starting at 1.

If you do not refer to it anywhere else in your assignment, you do not have to include the citation for this source in a Works Cited list.

Example:

Black and white male figure exercising

Fig. 1. Man exercising from: Green, Annie. "Yoga: Stretching Out." Sports Digest, 8 May 2006, p. 22. 

Example:

Yellow printed skirt by designer Annakiki. Faces on skirt.

Fig. 2. Annakiki skirt from: Cheung, Pauline. "Short Skirt S/S/ 15 China Womenswear Commercial Update." WGSN.

Labelling and citing an inserted table or graph

If you insert a table from another source into your assignment, you must create a caption for it directly below the table. Above the table, add a label (Table X) and below this add a description of what information is contained in the table.

The caption follows this format:

Source: Citation for source table was found in (e.g. a website, a journal article).

Note: If you have more than one table in your assignment, label your tables starting at 1.

If you do not refer to the table anywhere else in your assignment, you do not need to include the citation for this source in the Works Cited list.

Example:

Table 1

Variables in determining victims and aggressors

Table from a journal listing variables in determining victims and aggressors

Source: Mohr, Andrea. "Family Variables Associated With Peer Victimization." Swiss Journal of Psychology, vol65, no. 2, 2006, pp. 107-116, Psychology Collection, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1024/1421-0185.65.2.107.

Note: If you include a table or graph that you created yourself from data you collected yourself, you must still label and name the chart or graph. You do not, however, have to include the source information below. 

Labelling and citing an artwork from an online source

When you refer to a photographic reproduction of an artwork, the citation is made up of two parts:

  • Part 1: Lists the original artist's name, the name of the work, and the date the work was created. 
  • Part 2: Cites where you found the reproduction of the work such as a website. The example below is for an image taken from a webpage written by two authors. 

If you refer to the information from the artwork but do not reproduce it in your paper, create a citation both in-text and on your Works Cited list.

Artist's Last Name, First Name. Title of Work: Subtitle if Any. Year, Location of Work. "Title of Webapge," by Author's First Name Last Name. Title of Website, Publisher or Sponsoring Organization, Date of publication or last modified date, URL. Accessed Day Month Year site was visited.

Note: Date of access is optional in MLA 9th edition but it is an IB requirement so we at ISU require its inclusion.

Works Cited List Example  

Da Vinci, Leonardo. Last Supper. 1498, Santa Maria della Grazie, Milan. "The Last Supper," by Beth Harris and Steven Zucker, Khan Academy, 2015, www.khanacademy.org/humanities/ap-art-history/early-europe-and-colonial-americas/renaissance-art-europe-ap/a/leonardo-last-supper. Accessed 14 July 2018.

In-Text Citation Example

(Author's Last Name)

Example: (Da Vinci)

If you place the artwork in your paper, you must label the figure. The caption should be the Works Cited list citation for the source the figure was found in. For example, if it was found on a website, cite the website. 

Label your figures starting at 1.

Information about the figure (the caption) is placed directly below the image in your assignment.

Example:

Yellow printed skirt by designer Annakiki. Faces on skirt.

Fig. 1. Da Vinci, Leonardo. Last Supper. 1498, Santa Maria della Grazie, Milan. "The Last Supper," by Harris, Beth and Steven Zucker, Khan Academy, 2015, www.khanacademy.org/humanities/ap-art-history/early-europe-and-colonial-americas/renaissance-art-europe-ap/a/leonardo-last-supper. Accessed 14 July 2018.