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Publicly Available Image Collections

Using Images in Academic Work

When incorporating copyrighted material, including images, into your academic or artistic work it is important to be aware of the concept of Fair Use. 

Fair Use as defined in United States Copyright Law allows copyrighted material to be used for "various purposes for which the reproduction of a particular work may be considered fair, such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research." Fair is defined according to four criteria:

  1. The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes
  2. The nature of the copyrighted work
  3. The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole
  4. The effect of the use upon the potential market for, or value of, the copyrighted work

Bottom line: Using images in your academic work, as long as that work illuminates and adds to an understanding of those images, is considered Fair Use. You do not need to seek permission from the copyright holder (though you must properly cite and attribute credit to images).

Important to note: If your academic work is published and made commercially available, you may need to obtain permission to include any copyrighted images. This guide from NYU has more information on obtaining permissions. 

Captioning and Citing Images

An important part of using images in your academic work is attributing credit. Each image should include a caption, formatted according to the appropriate style guide rules.

Chicago Manual of Style (generally appropriate for Art History and History; verify your instructor's preference)

The Chicago Manual contains detailed information about formatting your captions and image list. From the link below, select Illustrations and Tables from Part One, Section 3 to get started, or skip to the excerpted information below. Please note that the Chicago Manual of Style is not available off-campus.

Modern Language Association (MLA) Style (generally appropriate for English and other Humanities subjects; verify your instructor's preference)

The MLA provides guidelines on incorporating figures to illustrate your work.

smfa