First, identify what you want to use.
A citation tells a reader where information came from. Permission tells you what you may reproduce. One does not replace the other. This page helps journalists, educators and other readers keep those decisions separate.
- Our writing
- Identify the article and link to it. Check the Terms of Service before reproducing material; request permission for uses not covered there.
- An image
- Follow the credit to the original item record. Its rights statement applies to that image, not automatically to the rest of this website.
- A date or table
- Record the calculation method, years or rows used, access date and verification limits. Keep traditional observance dates distinct from official public holidays.
This guide does not place OrientLore’s text, design, branding or data under a new open license, and does not replace our terms. It explains our attribution and permissions process, not the law for every jurisdiction or use.
Cite the page, not just the website.
Use OrientLore as the publisher, the article’s displayed title, its canonical page URL and the date you consulted it. If your publication requires a particular citation style, adapt the order and punctuation without losing those identifiers. Distinguish the date you accessed a page from its publication or review date; do not invent an individual author or a scholarly review process.
Keep a quotation visibly separate from your own words and preserve the qualifications that matter: a named literary telling is not evidence that an event happened; a family practice is not a rule for every Chinese household. An edited extract should not turn a cultural association into a promise of luck, health or wealth.
A source-identification example, not a grant of permission to reproduce the article. Replace the access-date placeholder with the date you actually checked it.
For substantial extracts, translations, adapted lessons, collections of articles or other republication, ask us about the intended use before publishing. Attribution does not itself grant a license. Linking readers to the original page is different from republishing its contents.
If a claim depends on a museum record or research publication, follow the article’s references and cite the source you actually inspected. Do not imply that you read an original source when you only read our introduction. Use the source directory to find the institution and the pages where a reference is used.
Check each image’s own rights.
Our pages use material from different creators and collections. A historical artwork, a photograph of it, an interpretive caption and this website’s design are not interchangeable assets. Open the credit link beneath the image, identify the exact record and read the rights statement before downloading or republishing anything.
The Met publishes eligible public-domain images through its Open Access programme. Check the individual record and its Open Access marking; do not assume that every image associated with the museum has the same status. A collection credit remains useful to readers even when a particular public-domain image does not require a copyright attribution.
For a photograph marked CC BY 4.0, follow that license’s attribution, license-link and change-notice conditions. For one marked CC BY-SA 4.0, also check the terms for sharing an adaptation. Other licenses and older versions can differ. Read the linked license rather than relying on a familiar abbreviation.
Every bracketed field is a placeholder. Check the original item record and applicable license; do not copy a license label from an unrelated picture.
Describe meaningful alterations, such as cropping, recoloring or combining images. Preserve the work’s identity; do not present a decorative detail as the complete object. An artwork’s age or an image’s license does not settle every privacy, personality, trademark or other right that could affect your project. We cannot clear third-party rights on someone else’s behalf.
If a credit is unclear or appears wrong, send the page URL and the image’s position to us rather than guessing an attribution. Do not treat a screenshot of an OrientLore page as a way to bypass the rights of the material inside it.
Credit the calculation and keep its limits.
Our zodiac-year reference and ten-year festival table are calculated reference material. Identify OrientLore’s table, the selected rows or year window, the access date and the calculation method. Where an independent comparison is stated, retain the linked official reference and its actual checked range; a later build is not a new independent verification.
Specify the rows or years you used and retain the method and verification limits. Do not describe our calculated table as an official Observatory publication.
For zodiac years, retain both Gregorian endpoints and explain that they are inclusive. The year changes at Lunar New Year in this reference, not January 1. The table’s last endpoint extends into 2101 and is calculated outside the Observatory index’s 1901–2100 span; do not label that endpoint as independently checked against a 2101 Observatory table.
For festival dates, state the years you used. The rolling ten-year window can change on rebuild; a downloaded copy does not update itself. Regular lunar months and UTC+8 solar-term dates are part of the method. The table is not a government holiday schedule, a local event listing or a guarantee that a venue will be open.
If you use our downloadable teaching timeline or embed a zodiac card, preserve its source link, method notes and date context. Follow the resource’s own instructions; this guide does not extend an embedding option into unrestricted republication of the site. Tell readers when you select, rearrange or recalculate data, and make your changes distinguishable from our original table.
Ask with enough detail for a useful answer.
Email service@walkthere.world with “Permission request” in the subject. Include:
- The exact page URLs, passages, table rows or images you want to use.
- Your publication, lesson, exhibition or project, including whether access is paid, public or internal.
- The format, language, intended audience, distribution and publication date.
- Any translation, editing, cropping, adaptation or proposed attribution.
- A contact address and the deadline by which you need a decision.
A request, an acknowledgement or the absence of a reply is not permission. We may need to clarify the scope, decline a use or direct you to an outside rights holder. We do not promise a response deadline or permission to use material we do not control. Please do not send confidential contracts or personal records in an initial inquiry.
Found a mistake in something you cited?
Send the page URL, the passage or table row, the problem and a reliable supporting record to service@walkthere.world. For an image issue, identify the work or photograph and the original rights record if available. Read our corrections and review log to see substantive changes already recorded.
If you have already published a citation, keep track of the version you used and review a relevant correction in context. Update your own publication where appropriate; do not assume that a page’s latest wording is what an earlier reader saw. We assess reports under our editorial principles, not by how often a claim has been repeated.
A reference is not an endorsement.
You may identify OrientLore when describing a source you used. Do not present a citation, link, screenshot, resource card or permission to reproduce a particular passage as our approval of a product, service, belief or campaign. Do not add claims such as “certified by OrientLore”, “museum-approved” or “proven to bring luck” to material sourced here.
The museums, researchers, communities and public institutions cited in our articles have not thereby endorsed OrientLore or your project. Do not place their names or logos in a way that implies a partnership or sponsorship. Permission for an item is not permission to use our branding or to speak on our behalf.
For an interview, press question or a use that needs explicit approval, contact us with the context. For an account of who publishes this library and its limits, read about OrientLore.