Legal deposit
Legal deposit is a legal requirement that a person or group submit copies of their publications to a repository, usually a library. The requirement is mostly limited to books and periodicals. The number of copies varies and can range from one to 19 (in Poland). Typically, the national library is one of the repositories of these copies. In some countries, there is also a legal deposit requirement placed on the government, and it is required to send copies of documents to publicly accessible libraries.
In the year 2000, UNESCO published recommendations for the construction of legal deposit legislation.
United States
In the United States, any copyrighted work that is published must be submitted in two copies to the United States Copyright Office at the Library of Congress. This mandatory deposit is not required to possess copyright of unpublished works, but a copyright registration can give an author enhanced remedies in case of a copyright violation. The Library of Congress does not retain all works.
A legal requirement also rests on the US government. Over 1,250 Federal depository libraries must receive a copy of all of the publications of the Government Printing Office.
United Kingdom
Legal deposit in the United Kingdom traces its origins to an agreement between Sir Thomas Bodley and the Stationer's Company that copies of new books would be added to the collection of the Bodleian Library in Oxford. The Statute of Anne (1710) formalised the practice by extending it, in England, to the Royal Library (now the British Library), Cambridge University Library, and the library of Sion College, and, in Scotland, to the Advocates' Library, and the universities of St. Andrews, Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Aberdeen. Over the years the number of legal deposit libraries has gone up and down, but now there are six legal deposit libraries in the UK and Ireland: the British Library, the National Library of Scotland, the National Library of Wales, the Bodleian Libraries, Oxford, the University Library, Cambridge, and the Library of Trinity College, Dublin.
The Legal Deposit Libraries Act 2003 restates Section 15 of the Copyright Act 1911, that one copy of every book (which includes pamphlets, magazines, newspapers, sheet music and maps) published there must be sent to the British Library; five other libraries (the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford, Cambridge University Library, the National Library of Scotland, the library of Trinity College, Dublin and the National Library of Wales) are entitled to request a free copy within one year of publication. The 2003 Act set out provisions for the deposit of non-print works. This legislation was updated with the introduction of secondary legislation, The Legal Deposit Libraries (Non-Print Works) Regulations 2013, which make provision for the legal deposit of works published online or offline in formats other than print, such as websites, blogs, e-journals and CD-ROMs. Social media content is included in the legislation, but not private message sent via social media platforms. Pure video streaming websites are also excluded from the legislation.
Other Countries
- Also see the Wikipedia page [ Legal deposit ]
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