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Capstone Projects - Finding and Citing Media

A guide for finding media to use in a multi-media Capstone Project, and best practices in incorporating and citing media in your project.

Best Practices in Citing Images

Although you do not need to use full APA citation style in your capstone project slide presentation, website, or other online platform, you do need to give attribution to objects that you did not create.

  1. Search for images on sites that have been recommended as having Creative Commons (CC) licensed or royalty free images.
  2. Check that the license applied to the specific object gives permission for reuse. If no CC license is applied, written permission is needed from the creator/ copyright holder.
    (NOTE: CC is integrated with Flickr --but not all Flickr images are CC licensed)
  3. Gather the information needed to give credit. At a minimum:
    • ​Creator's name/ website username
    • Work's title
    • The CC license applied
    • The link back to the object
    • A list of any alterations that you have made to the object
  4. Example attribution to use as caption (best) or at the end of the slide deck or webpage (ok):
    "1203-RGBG-Hamline-Building" by GBG PHOTO VISION is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0

NOTE: Royalty free clip art, such as those you find through MS Word, do not need attribution. However, a note in the image caption shows that attribution was not overlooked, e.g. Image from Microsoft Word 2016.

Resources for reusable images

Librarian curated lists for finding Creative Commons and royalty free images:

Finding CC Licensed Works

Images: a guide to finding visual resources: Open Web - Courtesy of Cornell University