Give credit where credit is due: websites May 13, 2010

Albums about trips are all the more interesting when you have stories and information added to the pages. However, if we use materials that come from someone else’s website, we  should only use the materials if the Terms of Use or Copyright statements allow and then acknowledge the source.   For photobooks, I suggest you use the final page of the book for your credits page.  Here you can record information about sources of information and materials used in the book. Yes, it can be tedious, but it is the right thing to do. It can also be very useful if later you want to revisit a source.

I’m researching some extra information to add to my Margaret River trip pages.  On the first day of our visit, we drove down to the Leeuwin Lighthouse, the tallest mainland lighthouse in Australia, and took a tour where we climbed all the way to the top.  The views at the top took what breathe we hadn’t already lost climbing, clean away.

For the album, I wanted to record how tall it was along with other interesting facts. I found a great website about Western Australian lighthouses that had a little table of information that was just what I wanted.  But – could I copy it and include it in my pages?

At the bottom of the web page I found their copyright information and by complying with their conditions, I can copy the table onto my page (large red arrow). As part of the credit, under the table I put the URL of the source (short red arrow).

Then I needed to go to my Credits page at the back of the album and add the information necessary to comply with their Terms of Use.

In this case, I need to have a copy of the copyright statement printed with the document.  The first line (red arrow) repeats the URL and the title of the page where the table is used and the rest of the text is their required statement.

Most websites have Copyright or Terms of Use information deep down the bottom of their pages or on an About page.  If you can’t find any statements then the very least you can do is to add a URL to the bottom of the image you are using and on your credits page list the page by giving the name of the site, the URL and the date you accessed the page.

(For more tips on photo usage, head over to SumScrapper for advice from professional photographer Sonya.)