You own the copyright of your Honors project. This means that no one can claim all or portions of your work for their own. If you publish your project in Digital Common and someone violates your copyright, the Macalester College Library is the publisher of record and will pursue copyright violations on your behalf. Please contact the library if you discover a violation of your copyright.
Keep in mind fair use applies to your work as well, and that others may well use and cite your work. Note that you can use Google Scholar to track citations to your work.
In Digital Commons you have the option of applying a Creative Commons license to your project. Why might you want to do this? The various Creative Common licenses allow you to state upfront how you would like others to use your work. All use must include attribution. But if someone wanted to use a photograph from your project, or images, or large sections of text, they would need to contact you for permission. With a Creative Commons license, you could say such use is okay, with attribution, and you need not be contacted beforehand. For questions about the advantages and disadvantages of Creative Commons license, please speak with your librarian.
You must respect the copyright of others when using their works in your project. You already likely know how to properly cite the works of others that you use. However, copyright comes into play in certain circumstances and must be respected. Copyright only applies for Honors projects that are published. If your project is not published, or restricted in use, copyright issues don't apply.
For help, try: Can I Use that? A map and outline from Copyright Services at the University of Minnesota Libraries.
Fair use guidelines: The following criteria for fair use are used in conjunction with one another, and weighed against each other. No one factor determines by itself if you have violated copyright or not.
Things to Consider: