Legal deposit of electronic books – a review of challenges faced by national libraries
| Published date | 21 March 2016 |
| Date | 21 March 2016 |
| Pages | 87-103 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/LHT-06-2015-0060 |
| Author | Marietjie De Beer,Marieta Van der Merwe,Liezl Ball,Ina Fourie |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Librarianship/library management,Library technology |
Legal deposit of electronic
books –a review of challenges
faced by national libraries
Marietjie De Beer, Marieta Van der Merwe, Liezl Ball and
Ina Fourie
University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of this paper is to explore the challenges faced by national libraries regarding
the legal deposit of electronic books, and to make recommendations for issues to consider –especially
with regard to developing, planning and implementing.
Design/methodology/approach –Literature published from 2000 to 2014 on legal deposit of
electronic publications was examined. Key databases covering library and information science were
searched, and case studies, general reviews, research papers/reports and view point articles were
considered.
Findings –National libraries embarking on projects on legal deposit of electronic books need to
consider the collection, preservation and accessibility of the legal deposit collection. They face
challenges regarding legal deposit legislation and institutional policy, legal considerations such as
copyright, environmental factors, established mechanisms for deposit, information retrieval and
access, preservation, human resources, financial implications and trust. Further research and
continued monitoring of issues of concern and changes are required due to technological developments
and the obsolescence of technology.
Practical implications –The review raises awareness of issues that need to be considered by
national libraries and other repositories to manage the legal deposit of electronic books in their
institutions.
Originality/value –The review can serve as a guide for nations (particularly in developing countries)
to embark on the legal deposit of electronic publications, specifically electronic books.
Keywords Collection development, Electronic books, Literature review, National libraries,
Bibliographic systems, Legal deposit
Paper type General review
1. Introduction
Legal deposit of knowledge artefacts such as books and journals creates a collection of
the national literature and so is an important mechanism to preserve the cultural
heritage of a nation (Muir, 2001; Zivkovic, 2008; Green, 2009).
Legal deposit processes for printed material has been established for centuries[1].
However, the same processes are not necessarily applicable in the case of non-print
material such as electronic books. Legal deposit of electronic publications is subject to
numerous, often unique challenges such as the legal deposit process, legal issu es and
infrastructure required. Some of these have been reported on (Muir, 2001; Hockx-Yu,
2006), while many issues are only scantily covered in the subject literature. Literature
reviews have been published about specific issues such as electronic books (Kumbhar,
2012), library digitisation issues (Lopatin, 2006), digital preservation management in
Eastern Africa (Mutula, 2014), digital library research including organisational an d
people issues (Liew, 2009) and multilinguality in digital libraries (Diemeka, 2012).
Only Muir (2001) compiled a literature review specifically about legal deposit and
preservation of digital publications.
Library Hi Tech
Vol. 34 No. 1, 2016
pp. 87-103
©Emerald Group Publis hing Limited
0737-8831
DOI 10.1108/LHT-06-2015-0060
Received 2 June 2015
Revised 7 October 2015
Accepted 9 October 2015
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0737-8831.htm
87
Legal deposit
of electronic
books
To the best of our knowledge, this paper is the first attempt to follow in the footsteps
of Muir (2001), by exploring the literature to report on the legal deposit of electronic
books and specifically the challenges faced by national libraries.
1.1 Problem statement and list of sub problems
Legal depositories and in particular national libraries face many challenges with
regards to the collection, preservation and accessibility of electronic publications –
especially electronic books received on legal deposit. In order for national libraries to
formulate policies and guidelines to deal with the legal deposit of electronic books the
question arises:
What has been reported on dealing with the legal deposit of electronic books that can guide
national libraries in facing the challenges of managing a legal depository for electronic books?
This will be answered by considering the following sub-questions:
•What has been reported on dealing with the legal deposit of electronic books
since the literature review of Muir (2001)?
•Which key challenges must be focused on?
•Which recommendations can be made for future research and monitoring?
1.2 Background
Responsibility for the management of published material received on legal deposit is
the domain of national libraries and other legal deposit repositories which might be
bound by legislation to collect, document, preserve and make accessible all published
material produced by a country (Larivière, 2000; Stephens and Gibby, 2011). According
to the IFLA Statement on Legal Deposit, national libraries are typically responsible for
legal deposit, although other institutions such as public- and university libraries may
also function as legal depositories (Ibrahim and Edzan, 2004; Bhatti, 2014). There are
245 national and state libraries in the world[2], of which 62 have legal deposit
legislation or participate in legal deposit activities[3].
Published material or publications consist of traditional printed text material and
non-printed material. In the context of legal deposit the latter term is generally used in
the broadest sense (Matovu and Musoke, 2012). For non-print material, the terms
electronic publications, e-publications or e-pubs are used, and includes text, images,
audio, sound and other machine readable files.
Many arguments can be found on the importance of legal depository: it is important
to provide citizens as well as researchers (within the country as well as abroad) with
access to a research collection of the country’s published material, it supports the
compilation of authoritative national bibliographies, it supports bibliographic control
and it makes it possible to monitor growth of the publishing industry (Larivière, 2000).
In many countries legal deposit of printed material is well established. Depending on
the legislative framework of each country, publishers send multiple copies of printed
material to legal deposit repositories where it is documented through bibliographic
descriptive records. The books are physically safeguarded in stacks from where it is
retrieved upon request by users who identify the books from the library catalogue
(currently referred to as the library management system).
Electronic publications have many unique challenges. Physical storage, long-term
preservation and long-term access, protection of copyright and metadata beyond basic
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