Publishers must send one copy to the British Library within one month of
publication. The other five libraries have the right to claim those publications
from the publishers and distributors. The current legal basis in the United
Kingdom is the Copyright Act of 1911, and in Ireland, the Copyright
and Related Rights Act of 2000.
A publisher is anyone who issues or distributes publications to the public.
All printed publications come within the scope of legal deposit. A code of
practice exists for the voluntary deposit of electronic publications. This
voluntary scheme fills a gap in the national published archive before
legislation is introduced for the deposit of non-print publications. Items
published elsewhere but distributed in the United Kingdom and Ireland,
irrespective of the place of publication or printing, the nature and size of the
imprint or the extent of distribution, are still subject to the need for legal
deposit.
What do you get in exchange?
Legal deposit has worked for almost four centuries with the copies made
available to library users in their reading rooms. You become part of the
national heritage as soon as you deposit your work. Publications are recorded in
the world-class catalogues (www.blaise.com)
for researchers and readers and listed in the British National Bibliography (BNB),
which is used by librarians and the book trade for stock selection.
"The purpose of Legal Deposit is to ensure that the nation's
published output (and thereby its intellectual record and future published
heritage) is collected systematically and as comprehensively as possible to make
it available to current researchers within the libraries of the legal deposit
system and to preserve the material for the use of future generations. The
system dates back several hundred years and has been a vital element in
preserving and making available the published record of previous generations for
the researchers of today and the future." The British
Library
