Need help citing content from our site? Have questions about copyright and permissions? This article discusses where to find help for creating citations and how to find copyright information for NCpedia and ANCHOR articles.

Citing Website Content

Researchers and writers provide citations for the material they have used, and most articles contain references for the resources used by the authors. Citing sources is important! It allows other readers and researchers to see where information originated. Citations also give credit to other researchers for the work they have done.

There are many different citation formats including the Chicago Manual of Style, the Modern Language Association (MLA), and the American Psychological Association (APA). These styles are commonly used and many teachers ask their students to use these.

NCpedia and ANCHOR contents use the Chicago Manual of Style citation format. Citations for content on the site are automatically generated for each page. These automatically generated citations can be found at the bottom of each page. Some pages do not have as much information (author, date, etc.) as others, so citations may vary. For more information, please consult the images located in the side panel of this page.

Citation Building Tools

NC State University Libraries Citation Builder
Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL) Research and Citation Resources
EasyBib

Copyright

What is copyright? Copyright is a form of intellectual property and is based on the laws of a country. Copyright laws give special legal rights to the creators of original work. Original work includes things like poems, books, musical compositions and recordings, paintings, photographs, and others. These legal rights are exclusive rights that belong to the owners of copyright (usually but not always the creator of a work). Specifically they are legal rights to how a work is expressed, used, and distributed.

Numerous individual authors and publications have contributed content to NCpedia and ANCHOR. Some of the site's content is under copyright from the original author or publisher. Articles that are under copyright have been included (or reprinted) on the site from these other sources with permission from the copyright owners. Please assume that entries are under copyright unless otherwise stated. NCpedia articles that are under copyright will have a copyright notice and any specific use restrictions specified with the article. Copyright notices and information about use restrictions appear at the top of an NCpedia article, just below the author information section and just before the article content. Content on ANCHOR may be used from other educational-use sources. If the content is not original to our site, it will include an attribution in the "Credit Text" field, if available. For more information, please consult the images located in the side panel of this page.

For more information on U.S. Copyright Law, please visit:

Copyright.gov (The U.S. Copyright Office)

Reuse of site materials including articles and images

Site content has been made available by contributors for personal educational use, consistent with provisions of fair use under copyright law. For any other uses, derivatives or republication requests, please contact the individual contributors or publishers. Requests to reprint or republish can be directed to individual contributors or to site staff. Editorial staff can help viewers with their questions or connect them with the authors and publishers as needed. Articles on the site span several decades, so please note the publication and copyright date of individual articles.

Many uses of information for personal and educational purposes fall under what is referred to as fair use and as stated in U.S. copyright law. If you are unsure of whether your particular use of content falls under fair use and you would like to inquire about permissions to use site content, please contact the NC Government & Heritage Library at the State Library of North Carolina.

You can contact us by email at: digital.info@dncr.nc.gov. You can also contact librarians for instant help during business hours when the library's live chat service is available.

Access the Chat

Citation

Agan, Kelly and Jared Dease. "Citing Website Content and Copyright." NCpedia. State Library of NC. December 2025. https://www.ncpedia.org/writing-and-citing-site-content.