Occupational Therapy

Why can’t I just grab any image off google and put it in my power point?

Copyright: If an image is copyrighted, that means it is illegal for you to re-use it anywhere, unless you get explicit permission from the author.

Fair Use: That said, you could argue that your re-use falls under the only legal exception for using copyrighted works, “Fair Use”, if you plan to use the work for purposes like: criticism, news reporting, scholarship, comment, teaching or research

Publication: However, students usually post their works on UND’s Institutional Repository, the Scholarly Commons, which is a kind of publication, and therefore does not qualify as any of the above “Fair Use” loopholes.

Creative Commons: You can also re-use images without worrying about fair use, copyright, or permission, if the image you’re re-using has one of the six creative commons licenses.

How can I find images on the internet that I can legally reuse?

• Google has special search filters to find images that allow reuse. Simply click “Images”, then “Tools”, then “Usage rights”. Most of these images are "reusable" because they have creative commons licenses which all allow different kinds of reuse. Check the specific license to learn whether there are requirements for reuse (like citing the creator or not modifying the original). If you don't see a creative commons license, it's possible it has one and its not labeled, or that the item is copyrighted but the creator is allowing reuse without permission. The only sure bet is a creative commons license-labeled resource.

• Pixabay and Tumblr are just two of many websites that have collections of creative commons images.
  • There are different kinds of creative commons licenses, so be sure to check to the right of each image to see what kind of re-use is allowed. (commercial, non-commercial only, etc.)
  • Licensing info on Tumblr is on the right beneath the image.
• Flickr has a section of their site called The Commons, which is a conglomeration of many institutions’ photos, all of which are in the public domain (think universities and libraries and museums).
• Wikipedia also has a long list of public-domain image websites
• Government websites have images that are owned by you, so you can use them without permission.

If you’re looking for medical images specifically:

• The National Library of Medicine runs two open-source image databases, MedPix, and Openi. These images are highly specific and medical in focus, but there are lots of them. You can re-use these images any way you like, just be sure to cite them. They also have a website with historical images: the History of Medicine Digital Collections.
• The National Institutes of Health has a Tumblr page, with images organized into themed “albums”
• The CDC maintains an online collection of public health images, the Public Health Image Library, or PHIL
• University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has a digital collection of the numerous historical colored woodcuts in the library’s first edition of De humani corporis fabrica libri septem

How do I cite images in my presentation?

Cite images in a presentation just like you would in an article or paper, using an accepted citation style like APA, AMA, Vancouver, or MLA.

• On a poster you can either:
  • place the image citations directly beneath your images
  • or use a figure number to refer to the citation located in a references section elsewhere on your poster
• In a presentation you can either
  • place image citations directly beneath your images (don’t make them so small that they’re illegible)
  • or follow common convention and include a slide of references at the end of your presentation as well as offer to email your references to your audience.