Digital Deposit
The National Library is working actively to encourage the Swedish Government and the Riksdag [Swedish Parliament] to adopt legislation regarding mandatory deposit copies of digitally produced material, to be known as the Swedish Digital Deposit Act.
The current deposit legislation applies only to hard-copy material and electronic documents distributed via CD-ROM or other similar media. It does not extend to publications on the Internet or other digital types of distribution.
In recent years, more and more material has been published in electronic form and on the Internet. The National Library consequently considers digital deposit legislation to be extremely important for ensuring that Swedish text production can be preserved for future generations.
Preparations
At present, the National Library signs agreements with publishers and other actors to deliver digital material on a voluntary basis. However, this is a cumbersome and unreliable method in the long run.
Other preparations for digital deposit legislation include the ongoing robot gathering of Swedish websites, a process that began back in 1997. This collection is growing rapidly, with 2-3 data gathering cycles per year.
Digital mass deliveries
In anticipation of digital deposit legislation, we are making preparations by building up a technical infrastructure to gather large amounts of digital material, such as the data files that provide the basis for printing newspapers, magazines, e-publications, etc. The material must be furnished with metadata and indexed so that it can then be stored and made available to users.
This infrastructure is being tested using voluntary deliveries from various producers, such as newspaper editorships and book publishers.
Basis for the collections
The National Library's collections are based in large part on the deposit law that was enacted back in 1661, which requires that all documents printed for public dissemination must be submitted to the National Library and six other university libraries.
The law initially functioned as part of the state censorship apparatus, but it has gradually become a decisive factor in our ability to preserve Sweden's printed culture inheritance. Thanks to the deposit law, the National Library now possesses nearly all Swedish books, posters, brochures, periodicals, timetables and telephone directories, which are materials of great value for research purposes.
Issues pertaining to digital deposit legislation have been addressed in the following reports: E-pliktutredningen (SOU 1998:111) [The Digital Deposit Report] and KB - ett nav i kunskapssamhället [The National Library – a hub in the information society] (SOU 2003:129).
