Legal deposit legislation for electronic publications

Citation

(2004), "Legal deposit legislation for electronic publications", The Electronic Library, Vol. 22 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/el.2004.26322aab.005

Legal deposit legislation for electronic publications

Legal deposit legislation for electronic publications

A Private Members Bill, introduced by Chris Mole MP in December 2002 has passed all its Parliamentary hurdles and became law on 31’October 2003 when it received Royal Assent. The Legal Deposit Libraries Act 2003 extends previous legal deposit legislation passed nearly 100 years ago in 1911. The Act enshrines the principle that electronic or e-publications and other non-print materials will be deposited in the future under secondary legislation. It ensures that these publications can be saved as part of the published archive – and become an important resource for future generations of researchers and scholars.

The introduction of MP Chris Mole's Bill followed a campaign to bring the law up to date with the current world of publishing which was led by the British Library, on behalf of all the legal deposit libraries and in association with Government. The new Act is generic and provides for secondary legislation to be approved by Parliament that will ensure that non-print formats are included within the legal deposit system.

Since 1911 the six legal deposit libraries have been able to collect copies of all printed material published in the UK. However, an increasing volume of important material had begun to be published in electronic and other non-print formats. These fell outside the scope of the 1911 Act and were not therefore being comprehensively collected. A study last year forecast a massive increase in online publications, predicting a near quadrupling (from 52,000 to 193,000) in the number of electronic journal issues published in the UK between 2002 and 2005.

With the new Act, a piece of "enabling legislation", it will be possible to establish a systematic arrangement for the collection and reservation of non-print publications. These will include CD-ROMs and non-commercial publications, and will include the selective harvesting of information from the 2.96 million Web sites which originate in the UK. The generic nature of the new law means that new formats and information carriers can be included within legal deposit – through regulations – as they emerge and become widely used.

The new legislation will build on the strengths of a voluntary scheme introduced in January 2000 which was designed to capture offline material for the National Published Archive before legislation was achieved. Administered by the Joint Committee on Voluntary Deposit – comprising representatives from the legal deposit libraries and four of the main publisher trade bodies –’the scheme saved many non-print items.