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ART 1301 & 1303: Core I & II

A course guide to library research and inspiration resources Core I & II Foundations Art & Design students.

MLA & Other Citation Styles & Citing Images

NOT CITING OR GIVING ATTRIBUTION TO AN IMAGE SOURCE IS A FORM OF VISUAL PLAGIARISM

Citing images:

The basic elements needed  for citing images are as follows:

  • artist's name, if known
  • title of image, if known
  • date work was created
  • if date is unknown, place n.d. were the date would go
  • permanent owner or institution where the artwork is housed
  • the location or city

How to Cite Images from Mississippi State University

Copies of The Chicago manual of Style are also available at the Alkek Library and the Music Library.

Citing Images Chicago Style from Colgate Visual Resources Library

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Or if you would like to use another style you can look at other Writing & Citation Style Guides such as APA, MLA. ASA, IEEE.

ASA Image Citation

MLA Style Guide from Purdue

Other MLA resources

Print copies of the MLA Handbook are available for checkout

To see examples of how to cite images in MLA, see the An Image (Including a Painting, Sculpture, or Photograph) entry or the A Painting, Sculpture, or Photograph entry from Purdue's Online Writing Lab.

Citing images in APA from the APA Style Blog

IEEE Style

IEEE Editorial Style Manual (Online)

The IEEE Guide to Writing in the Engineering and Technical Fields, First Edition - Ebook

 

From The Chicago Manual of Style 16th edition

3.22 Formal titles in captions

Frontispiece of Christian Prayers and Meditations (London: John Daye, 1569), showing Queen Elizabeth at prayer in her private chapel. Reproduced by permission of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Trustees of the Lambeth Palace Library.
 
The head of Venus—a detail from Botticelli’s Birth of Venus.
 
Francis Bedford, Stratford on Avon Church from the Avon, 1860s. Albumen print of collodion negative, 18.8 × 28.0 cm. Rochester, International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House.
 
Friedrich Overbeck and Peter Cornelius, double portrait, pencil drawing, 1812. Formerly in the Collection Lehnsen, Scarsdale, New York.
 
APA Citation Style for books and other materials:

Understanding a Journal Citation

You'll see something like this:

It's important to know the parts of a citation so you can interpret it correctly. You must have at least the Journal name, volume, issue, and page number to be able to locate the article.

Ways to Avoid Plagiarism

A Note about Plagiarism

It is important to cite your sources properly. If you want to learn more about avoiding plagiarism, read the Plagiarism Guide.


When you are writing your paper, you can use several ways to present information you have found in the body of your paper, and consciously avoid plagiarizing.

  • Direct quote

If you want to use a sentence or a passage exactly as it was written, you can include a direct quote, surrounded by quotation marks, and either using an inline citation, or a sentence before the quote referencing the author and work of origin.

  • Summary

You can also write a summary (in your own words of course) of the ideas or text you want to use. It helps to write the summary from your memory rather than looking directly at the passage.

  • Paraphrase

Paraphrasing is similar to a summary. It just means taking what you have read and rewriting it in your own words.