History Day

Copyright-Fair Use  

The National History Day Contest Rule Book clarifies that, "The Fair Use doctrine allows for educational use of copyrighted materials for noncommercial purposes. For this reason, you must not place your project in a nonacademic public setting, such as a commercial internet site, without obtaining permission from the copyright owner." (page 16)

Resources on copyright:

• U.S. Copyright Office Fair Use Index  
• Library of Congress: Copyright and Primary Sources 

Plagiarism

Page 17 of the National History Day Contest Rule Book provides the following definition of plagiarism from the online Merriam-Webster Dictionary:

• "To steal and pass of (the ideas or words of another) as one’s own"
• "To use (another’s production) without crediting the source
• "To commit literary theft"
• "To present as new and original an idea or product derived from an existing source"

The Rule Book further states that plagiarism includes, but is not limited to, the following examples:

• "Turning in someone else’s project as your own"
• "Failing to put quotation marks around direct quotes and include both a source credit and a proper citation of the source"
• "Failing to provide proper citations for all quoted and paraphrased material"
• "Failing to provide the sources for audio, video, or images used in your project"
• "Giving incorrect information about the source of a quote"

Resources on plagiarism:

• Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL): Avoiding Plagiarism