Ethical Use of Images

Abstract

Images carry core cultural and personal expressions and information, packaged in an engaging format that is easy to use and share. This ease can raise challenging ethical issues in academic, personal, and professional realms. Solutions aren’t always simple or immediate, and the process of exploring ethical issues can be daunting. Complex concepts and new terminology can be barriers to making ethical choices about image use, while a focus on technical and legal issues can cause one to lose a broad ethical view. A working knowledge of copyright and fair use is essential to an overall understanding of ethical image use. Copyright may be familiar territory, as you’ve worked with students to quote and paraphrase text, access electronic reserves and course materials, or contribute electronic theses or dissertations to an institutional repository. Images present questions about copyright that you may be less confident addressing and may have less practice dealing with. The lack of comfort with image-related copyright can inhibit scholars’ effectiveness in a world where multimodal scholarship has become the norm. In this chapter we share basic information, tools, and resources for using images ethically and applying copyright effectively.