Village Soup/Knox County (ME) Times has an
article about a proposed plan for Rockland Harbor. The article includes a map, apparently taken from MapQuest, and enhanced (it's a screen capture; it does not use the API). Below is this caption:
A map of O'Hara Corporation's proposed project site in Rockland. (Photo by MapQuest.com)
I'm sure that was a cut and paste error, but I do have a point. As more citizen journalism and more students use the Web to search for and use content, they (and others) need guidance in how to cite such references. Let's assume the map was used under "fair use" (I'm not sure it was). How is it to be cited? Must it include the copyright info for the data? (It does not.) Must it include a link? What do Manuals of Style say? What does MapQuest say?
Author or statement of responsibility. Map Title [map]. Data date if known. Scale; Name of person who generated map; Name of software used to generate the map or “Title of the Complete Document or Site”. (date generated).
Delaware, Ohio [map]. 2001. Scale undetermined; generated by Deb Peoples; using “MapQuest.com, Inc”.
(2 May 2005)
The following website offers additional examples:
http://library.owu.edu/citing222.html, and a websearch for the phrase "citing maps" yields numerous results.
Concerning copyright, the United States authority has many useful papers demystifying the topic: http://www.copyright.gov/. Another serious examination comes from J.B. Post of the New York Map Society, who has collected map copyright case law from 1789-1998; see: http://www.nymapsociety.org/FEATURES/POST.HTM