Electronic Legal Deposit

Legal deposit libraries, the national and
academic institutions who systematically preserve our written cultural record,
have recently been mandated with expanding their
collection practices to include digitised and born-digital materials. The
regulations that govern electronic legal deposit often also prescribe
how these materials can be accessed. Although a growing international activity,
there has been little consideration of the
impact of e-legal deposit on the 21st Century library, or on its present
or future users.

This edited collection is a timely
opportunity to bring together international authorities who are placed to
explore the social, institutional and user impacts of e-legal deposit. It
uniquely provides a thorough overview of this worldwide issue at an important
juncture in the history of library collections in our changing information
landscape, drawing on evidence gathered from real-world case studies produced
in collaboration with leading libraries, researchers and practitioners
(Biblioteca Nacional de México, Bodleian Libraries, British Library, National
Archives of Zimbabwe, National Library of Scotland, National Library of
Sweden). Chapters consider the viewpoint of a variety of stakeholders,
including library users, researchers, and publishers, and provide overviews of
the complex digital preservation and access issues that surround e-legal
deposit materials, such as web archives and interactive media.

The book will be essential
reading for practitioners and researchers in national and research libraries,
those developing digital library infrastructures, and potential users of these
collections, but also those interested in the long-term implications of how our
digital collections are conceived, regulated and used. Electronic legal deposit
is shaping our digital library collections, but also their future use, and this
volume provides a rigorous account of its
implementation and impact.