Creating Presentations

Any presentation that uses multimedia needs to contain the following two essential parts:

Copyright and Fair Use Disclaimer
Works Cited list for all sources that were used to generate ideas for the presentation content, as well as images. Include images used in the presentation in your Works Cited.

Here are some things to know about Copyright and Fair Use for presentations.

Students can use copyrighted material for school presentations.
Certain guidelines must be followed when using copyrighted material:
- Web Images: 10% or 15 images (whichever is less) from any one collection or website
- Music: 10% or 30 seconds of a song (whichever is less)
- Illustrations: no more than 5 images by 1 artist
- Motion/videos: 10% or 3 minutes (whichever is less) of a copyrighted work
You cannot post a presentation on a public website if that presentation contains copyrighted material, or let anyone else use it.

More information about Fair Use, including video and sound, can be found on the Copyright and Fair Use page.

Your first slide or screen should include the title of your presentation, your name, class, date, etc.

It should also include the Copyright and Fair Use disclaimer statement, which you can copy and paste:

NOTICE: The following presentation contains copyrighted materials used under the Multimedia Guidelines and Fair Use exemptions of U.S. Copyright law. Further use is prohibited.

Your opening slide should look similar to this:

There are many important things to include on your Works Cited list about the resources you used to create your presentation:

Any resource used to gather information needs to be cited, including images, videos, websites, books, etc.
List all of the resources used, in alphabetical order.
- Look at the first letter in the citation, ignoring A, An, The.
- If the first word is the same, alphabetize by the second word.
Use a left margin.
If an entry is more than one line, indent any additional lines.
Double space between lines and entries.
Use correct MLA citation format and punctuation.
Do not use bullets in your Works Cited list.

The Works Cited slide or screen should look similar to this:

Before turning in your presentation, make sure that you complete these steps:

The opening slide or screen has the Copyright and Fair Use Disclaimer.
The final slide or screen has a list of all the resources that you used, properly cited in MLA format.
Images are cited on the Works Cited slide or directly underneath the image, using MLA format.

Need more help? Talk to your school's Library Media Specialist.