In the same way that you can reuse other people's text with referencing in student assignments, you can also use excerpts from different media—for example, graphs, pictures, and music. However, if you want to share the assignment with people other than teachers and fellow students in the course, you must take into consideration which intellectual property rights are associated with the work in question.

By intellectual property rights, we mean the right of the creator of an intellectual property to decide how a work is used. The intellectual property can be literary, scientific, or artistic. You must obtain permission and provide the source of reuse of the material.

Creative Commons

Sometimes, works are shared under open licenses, referred to as Creative Commons licenses or simply CC licenses. This means that the author gives others permission to reuse and share the work, with the obligation to credit the author. Different types of open licenses grant different rights for reuse. These can, for example, regulate the extent to which one can modify the content or whether it can be reused for commercial purposes. There are six different variations of such licenses. Here are three examples:

CC BY: share and adapt the work freely if you credit the author, indicate changes, and the license.
CC BY-NC: As above, but the adapted work cannot be used for commercial purposes.
CC BY-SA: As above, but the work can only be distributed under the same terms as the original.

Where to find images

When writing assignments, you should consider images similar to direct quotes. The works should not be used merely as mood-creating illustrations but must be integrated into the argumentation.

But how do you find images? There are many online collections of images with various forms of licenses. UiB provides access to extensive collections, such as ArtStor, which has over 2 million images, and Marcus, UiB’s image platform featuring historical pictures. Additionally, as a student, you can request access via UiB to images from the image agency Colourbox.

An overview of image collections can be found on the library’s Norwegian subject page for art history.

You must obtain permission if you plan to share the assignment with others beyond your class. A good tip is to get used to looking for images with an open license right from the start. This can be quickly done in Google.

For example, let's say you are looking for images for an assignment about the so-called plastic whale found near Bergen in 2017. In Google, you can narrow your search to only photos, and under "tools," you can specify, among other things, the size, age, color tone, or usage rights that the search results should include.

Do you want to know more?

Work is protected by copyright if:

The work is a scientific, literary or artistic work. Examples: A book, a ph.d-thesis, an article or an illustration. Official administrative documents are not protected by copyright.
The work needs to be an original, creative work. It must be the result of the originator’s own creative contribution. You cannot copy somebody else’s work and claim it as your own.
The work must be expressed, for example through writing, an illustration or a figure. Copyright protects the expression, not the idea.

The originator of the work owns the rights to his/her work from the moment it is created. It is not necessary with any kind of registration or mark for a work to be protected.

There are two types of copyright:

Moral rights: The right to be attributed as the author/creator, and to ensure that the work is reproduced in a manner that does not offend the author/creator.
Economic rights: The right to produce copies and to make the work available. This includes the right to:
- Reproduction of the work: For example to make paper copies and the right to digital archiving.
- Distribution of the work: For example by sale, loan or rental of the work.
- Public display and performance of the work: For example a lecture or a musical performance, to send an article by e-mail, or to make an article or book available on the Internet.
- Transformation of the work: For example translation of a book.

The author as a rule owns both economic and moral rights to their work, but can sign away economic rights when for example publishing or through employment agreements.

This text derives from the University Library's pages on copyright.

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