So you’ve located your open materials, Now what?

Providing attributions for open educational resources (OERs) is not only required for Creative Commons (CC) licensed materials, but citing sources for collected works is a good practice to follow in general. Documenting the material that you are using by including the author’s name and the name of the license, as well as where you found it can be especially helpful…

• When embedded content is malfunctioning or fails to appear. You can refer and go to the URL of the content item.

• When learning what permissions are granted for the content. You can refer to the license name, which informs you what you can do with the material as well what is permissible.

• When determining what changes have been made for any derivate work. You can go to the URL of the original work that is provided to determine the changes that have been made.

• When researching the author, organization or project of the content. If you would like to know more about the author of the project or the organization or project in which the work is created, used or derived, you can conduct a search using the author’s name and the organization and project title or go to any provided URLs in the attribution.

Is there a tool to help me generate attributions for open materials?

Open Washington Attribution Builder is a tool that you can use, which automatically generates attributions for any open materials that you’ve located. Just go to the site and complete the online form. After filling out the provided fields, an attribution is generated complete with active links and a html code for you to cut and paste into your project.

Screenshot example of an attribution generated with Open Washington Attribution Builder [CC BY 4.0.] Managed by WA SBCTC.

Try it out!

Go to Open Washington Attribution Builder and try it out for yourself. It’s that easy!