Electronic Legal Deposit: Shaping the library collections of the future

Edited by Paul Gooding and Melissa Terras, 2020, Facet Publishing.

ISBN 10: 1783303778

Purchase the print/ebook here! 

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.

Author accepted versions of chapters

• Foreword (to the past): Bethany Nowviskie.
• Chapter 2. The Influence of Legal Deposit Legislation on the Digital Collections of the National Library of Scotland: Paul Cunnea, Gill Hamilton, Graeme Hawley, Fred Saunderson (National Library of Scotland)
• Chapter 6. Publishers, legal deposit, and the changing publishing environment: Adrienne Muir
• Chapter 7. Making History: digital preservation and electronic legal deposit in the second quarter of the 21st Century: William Kilbride
• Chapter 8. Giving with one click, taking with the other: e-legal deposit, web archives and researcher access : Jane Winters
• Chapter 9. Follow the users: assessing UK nonprint legal deposit within the academic discovery environment: Linda Berube and Frankie Wilson
• Chapter 10. An Ark to Save Learning from Deluge’? Reconceptualising Legal Deposit after the Digital Turn  : Paul Gooding and Melissa Terras
• More links will be added as they become available…

This follows Facet’s Green Open Access guidelines. Please do Purchase the print/ebook here! 

The artwork on the cover of the book (and the header of this website) is a LiDAR scan of the National Library of Scotland stacks, by Asad Khan, see theentropyproject.com. Used with permission.