National Memory and Digital Delivery: Progress with the Legal Deposit of Electronic Publications in the United Kingdom
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-Abstract
In the United Kingdom the Legal Deposit Libraries Act 2003 reaffirmed the provisions of the Copyright Act 1911 for the legal deposit of printed publications at six libraries: the British Library, the national libraries of Scotland and Wales, The Bodleian Library in Oxford, Cambridge University Library, and, the library of Trinity College in Dublin. Publishers in the UK are obliged to send one copy of each of their publications to the British Library, free of charge, within one month of the date of publication. This is administered through the Library’s Legal Deposit Office. The other five libraries have the right to request the deposit of publications, free of charge, within a year of the date of publication. Whilst the British Library receives legal deposit materials through their Legal Deposit Office, the other libraries use the Agency for Legal Deposit Libraries (ALDL) to claim the majority of publications on their behalf. The six legal deposit libraries cooperate in recording and maintaining the published archive of the British Isles. A key element of this cooperation is the Shared Cataloguing Programme. Each of the libraries is responsible for cataloguing an agreed allocation of printed books. They use a Standard Record Specification using MARC 21, the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, authority controlled name and subject headings and send the records to the British Library by FTP where Dewey numbers are added before the records are made available as the British National Bibliography. The 2003 Act, as well as reaffirming the provisions of the earlier Act for printed publications also extended the principle to cover electronic publications. However, the Act did not bring legal deposit of electronic publications into effect; it gave powers to the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) to make regulations for the deposit of non-print, including digital publications on hand-held media or available on-line. The libraries are hopeful that the legislation will come into force from 1 April 2013 and the preparation for the operational aspects of the legislation is well underway. In all there are ten legal deposit projects running under the Digital Library Programme managed by the British Library. Collectively the projects cover all aspects of ingest, storage and access. The projects are still live and subject to change, and are, of course being undertaken in anticipation of the successful passage of United Kingdom legislation.
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Published
2012-08-01
How to Cite
Forbes, G., Kovácsné Koreny, Á National Memory and Digital Delivery: Progress with the Legal Deposit of Electronic Publications in the United Kingdom, Scientific and Technical Information, 59(10), p. 415–420, 2012.
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