Wikimedia for LiaScript: Embed Media with Automatic Attribution

Open Educational Resources live and die by proper attribution. When you embed a photo, audio recording, or video from Wikimedia Commons in your course, you are legally required to credit the author, name the license, and link back to the source. That’s three to five fields per media file — easy to get wrong, easy to forget entirely.

The Wikimedia template solves this problem entirely. Pass a file name or a Commons URL to a single macro — @Wikimedia.embed — and the template fetches everything from the Commons API automatically: the image or media file, the title, the artist’s name, the license, and the source link. All baked into a single LiaScript media element, correctly attributed.

No copy-pasting, no manual license lookup, no broken attribution chains.

Quick Start

Add one line to your course header:

<!--
import: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/LiaTemplates/Wikimedia/main/README.md
-->

For a version-stable import (recommended for published courses):

<!--
import: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/LiaTemplates/Wikimedia/0.0.2/README.md
-->

All macros are immediately available in your document.

Embedding a Single File: @Wikimedia.embed

The main macro takes a File: identifier or a full Wikimedia Commons URL and renders the correct LiaScript media element — ![…](…) for images, ?[…](…) for audio, and !?[…](…) for video. The alt text, title, artist, license, and source URL are assembled automatically.

@Wikimedia.embed(File:Hoverfly_May_2008-8.jpg)

You can also pass a full Commons URL:

@Wikimedia.embed(https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Turdus_merula_2.ogg)

Both forms work — the template normalises the input internally. The result is a fully attributed image, audio clip, or video inline in your course:

Building a Gallery: @Wikimedia.gallery

To embed multiple files as a LiaScript gallery, pass a |-separated list of identifiers. All requests run in parallel; each unique file is only fetched once even if referenced elsewhere.

@Wikimedia.gallery(File:Turdus_merula_2.ogg|File:Turning_a_Resource_into_an_Open_Educational_Resource.webm|Datei:Global_Open_Educational_Resources_Logo.svg)

The macro renders the gallery with the same automatic attribution as the single-file embed:

Metadata Macros

If you need individual attribution fields — for custom captions, footnotes, or formatted credit lines — each piece of metadata has its own macro:

All six macros share an internal cache with @Wikimedia.embed. If you embed a file and then call @Wikimedia.artist for the same file, no second network request is made.

Example:

**Title:** @Wikimedia.title(File:Zunftwappen.svg)

**Artist:** @Wikimedia.artist(File:Zunftwappen.svg)

**License:** @Wikimedia.license(File:Zunftwappen.svg)

**Source:** @Wikimedia.source(File:Zunftwappen.svg)

Full Template Demo

The full Wikimedia README is itself a self-documenting LiaScript course — you can explore all features live:

Use Cases

OER courses with rich media — Wikimedia Commons hosts millions of freely licensed images, audio recordings, and videos. With this template, any of them can be embedded in seconds with correct attribution — no legal risk, no extra work.

History and cultural education — Embed historical photographs, artworks, maps, and recordings from Commons. The automatic attribution keeps every image legally clean without interrupting the writing flow.

Natural science courses — Commons has an enormous collection of biological photos, anatomical diagrams, geological maps, and chemistry illustrations — all usable in STEM courses with a single macro call.

Language learning — Audio recordings of native speakers, pronunciation examples, and songs are available on Commons. Use @Wikimedia.embed with audio files to add listening exercises to any course.

Journalism and media literacy — Teach students to properly attribute media by showing how attribution works in practice. The metadata macros let you display each attribution field individually to explain what proper crediting looks like.

Slide presentations — Build image-rich presentation slides in LiaScript backed by Wikimedia Commons, with every image legally attributed without cluttering the source text.

Technical Facts

Try It

Related Templates

• ABCjs — embed and play music notation from plain text; pair with Wikimedia audio
• Pannellum — embed 360° panorama images
• BeforeAndAfter — compare two images with a sliding overlay
• citations — embed BibTeX references for academic attribution