From andre.schueller@web.de Mon Nov 3 10:03:51 2003
Date: Sun, 2 Nov 2003 16:29:17 +0100
From: Andre Schueller
Reply-To: Internet in Bibliotheken
To: inetbib@ub.uni-dortmund.de
Subject: Elektronisches Pflichtexemplar - 2
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Historic change in Legal Deposit Law saves electronic publications for future generations - Bill to extend legal deposit to UK non-print materials receives Royal Assent
31 October 2003 :: Posted by British Library Press & Public Relations
A Private Members Bill, introduced by Chris Mole MP in December 2002 has passed all its Parliamentary hurdles and became law today 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.
Chris Mole MP said, 'I am thrilled that we have managed to secure this historic change in Legal Deposit Law. This new legislation will now mean that a vital part of the nation's published heritage will be safe and accessible as an important resource for business and education users in the future.'
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 websites with a .uk suffix, which currently exist. 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 (JCVD) - comprising representatives from the legal deposit libraries and four of the main publisher trade bodies - the scheme saved many non-print items.
Heritage Minister Andrew McIntosh said, 'I am very pleased that my Department was able to support this initiative and welcome its passage into law. It ensures that the system of Legal Deposit will properly reflect the changing shape of the publishing industry in the United Kingdom.
Lynne Brindley, Chief Executive of the British Library said, 'This is an historic piece of legislation and puts the UK among the first countries which will be collecting, by law, their electronic published output. This has been achieved by interested parties working together successfully to clear all the major legislative hurdles. This would not have been possible without the expertise and dedication of Dr Clive Field, Director of Scholarship and Collections at the British Library and his team who worked so hard to achieve this splendid result.'
Dr Clive Field, Chair of the JCVD added: 'This was indeed a major collaborative result and I wish especially to thank Chris Mole MP, Lord Graham Tope (the Bill's sponsor in the House of Lords), Sir Anthony Kenny (chair of the original working party on this matter), colleagues in the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, the Digital Content Forum, JCVD and the legal deposit libraries for their commitment and partnership in bringing this measure to the statute book.'
Angela Mills Wade, speaking on behalf of the Digital Content ForumÂ^Òs Industry Action Group on Intellectual Property Rights, said today: 'After some difficult moments during the passage of the Bill, publishers have negotiated key reassurances from Government and crucial changes to the wording of the legislation itself. I am pleased to say this establishes a basis for publishers and libraries to work together constructively to develop practical ways to capture electronic as well as print publications.'
For more details please contact:
For further information contact Greg Hayman or Val McBurney in Press and
Public Relations at the British Library. Telephone: +44 (0)20 7412 7116 or +44
(0)20 7412 7112, Fax: +44 (0)20 7412 7168, email: greg.hayman@bl.uk
or val.mcburney@bl.uk
Notes for editors:
1. What is legal deposit? The 1911 Act requires publishers to deposit with the British Library a copy of all published items produced in the UK and Ireland within one month of publication. The five other legal deposit libraries have the right to claim copies of the same material with 12 months of publication. (The Copyright Libraries Agency acts on behalf of the five other libraries to claim and distribute the material.)
Previously, the only published works covered by legal deposit were books, pamphlets, maps, printed music, journals and newspapers. With the new law, works published in non-print format will be collected including works published on CD-ROM; on the Internet; or on microfilm.
2. What is the role of the legal deposit libraries? Together the six legal deposit libraries (The British Library; the National Library of Scotland and the National Library of Wales; University Library, Cambridge; Bodleian Library, Oxford; and Trinity College Library, Dublin) maintain a world-class National Published Archive, which has benefited generations of researchers from industry, academia and the general public.
The existing print legal deposit arrangements have enabled the British Library alone to collect and save, in perpetuity for the nation, more than 50 million items. In the last year the Library acquired 95,286 books, 248,686 journal issues, 1,994 maps and 2,357 newspaper titles through legal deposit. Once acquired, the Library stores and catalogues these items and provides facilities for researchers to access them. In this way millions of unrelated items, which form the National Published Archive, are transformed into organised knowledge and secured for posterity.
3. Chris Mole MP. Chris is one of Parliament's newest MPs, becoming the Member of Parliament for Ipswich in a by-election in November 2001. In Parliament, Chris serves as a member of the Select Committee that scrutinises the work of the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, the Deregulation and Regulatory Affairs Select Committee and the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments. Chris holds a degree in electronics from the University of Kent and moved to Ipswich in 1981 to work at the BT Laboratories at Martlesham Heath near Ipswich.
4. What are the trends in non-print publishing? Over 60,000 non-print items (e.g. DVDs, CD-ROMs, electronic journals and other items delivered via the web) were published in the UK last year. The impact of the extension of legal deposit to non-print publications (Electronic Publishing Services Ltd., October 2002) forecasts that the number of electronic journal issues published in the UK will grow from 52,000 in 2002 to 193,000 in 2005. A recent phenomenon has been the emergence of single-article journal issues transmitted by e-mail - with an average of 40 issues for each title per year. Many publications, such as newspapers are being published in multiple formats - print, web, CD-ROM and microform - but do not always have identical content. Similarly, there are a growing number of hybrid publications, such as print journals with added material available on the web or CD-ROM. The new Act will help the legal deposit libraries to collect and organise this knowledge.
5. What non-print materials will now be saved? The major categories of non-print materials include:
- Publications accessed over the Internet, e.g. electronic journals.
- Websites - a limited and well-defined range of sites, judged to be research-level, will be regularly harvested for addition to the national archive.
- Publications on media other than paper, such as microfilm or fiche.
- 'Hand-held' electronic publications on media such as CD-ROM or DVD.
The types of material include:
Records of key events of national life - e.g. national and local websites covering general elections, the millennium celebrations, the Queen's Golden Jubilee and the Commonwealth Games - all containing useful historical data.
Resource discovery tools, to help researchers locate materials e.g. the Applied Social Sciences Index and Abstracts (ASSIA) or Legal Journals Index.
Major directories - e.g. the Europe Info directory on DVD, an important resource with 130 million European residential and business listings, or Kelly's Portsmouth Directory on CD-ROM.
Current awareness services - e.g. Oxford Economic Forecasting's Weekly Brief - an electronic journal available only as a PDF or Zip/EXE file, typically distributed as an email attachment.
News sources - such as web editions of national and local newspapers, or the web-published results of public opinion polls from companies such as MORI, ICM or YouGov.
Professional 'bibles' - e.g. The Cochrane Library, 'the best single source of reliable evidence about the effects of health care' (on CD-ROM and the web with no hard copy equivalent).
Important local and national government documents - e.g. the Home Office series of 'online only' research reports and web-based Government consultation papers, which are an important resource for lawyers and researchers in tracing the origin of legislation, and the minutes of the National Assembly for Wales.
e-journals - e.g. Sociological Research Online and the Journal of Digital Information, available only on the web.
Conference proceedings - e.g. 9/11 and the Middle East: Electronic Resource published by the Royal Institute of International Affairs.
6. What are other countries doing? A number of other nations have already addressed, or are investigating, the extension of legal deposit. In Germany new legislation has been drafted to cover all types of material whilst a voluntary scheme to obtain online material and websites - in operation since March 2002 - has been generally well received by publishers and users alike. In France the government has issued a directive to ensure that the national library will collect all electronic material. Norway and Denmark have similar schemes and are actively collecting digital material in all information carriers, including websites. In Finland legislation was introduced in March 2003 to extend legal deposit to websites (current legislation includes other electronic material) whilst in New Zealand legislation has also been enacted this year. http://www.natlib.govt.nz/en/about/1keypolnlact.html
7. How the new scheme works? The Act will be implemented through a series of Regulations, the first of which will almost certainly deal with offline publications, such as CD-ROMs and microform. Regulations will be proposed by the Secretary of State, for affirmative resolution by both Houses of Parliament, following a statutory process of consultation with affected parties and a Regulatory Impact Assessment. This in turn will be preceded by the work of an Advisory Panel, to be established by Government as an independent public body, to advise the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport on the need for, and the shape of, specific Regulations. In advance of the establishment of the Advisory Panel, the JCVD will continue its work, as a forum for collaborative and voluntary endeavour between publishers and libraries, but with a broadened remit and an extended membership.
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