Legal Deposit User Forum Guide

Under Legal Deposit law, the British Library is entitled to receive one copy of each publication within one month of publication. The other five Legal Deposit libraries are entitled to receive a copy of each publication on request and employ the Agency for Legal Deposit Libraries to request and distribute publications on their behalf.

The six Legal Deposit libraries work together to support collection, discovery, access, and preservation for the UK’s published output. The libraries maintain a Joint Collecting Framework, which provides guiding principles for the development of Legal Deposit, and a Joint Collecting Policy, which identifies collecting priorities for each of the libraries.  In addition, a shared technical infrastructure supports this collaborative effort for managing digital Legal Deposit content.

Legal Deposit is extremely broad in its application and aims to be comprehensive and inclusive. It applies to publishers of all sizes, from individual self-publishers and small presses through to the largest multinational publishers.  

For printed publications Legal Deposit applies to:

• Books, pamphlets, magazines, newspapers and journals
• Single sheets of music
• Maps, plans, charts, tables

Legal Deposit extends to all such publications made available by publishers in the UK, and includes material originally produced outside the UK but distributed within the UK by the publisher. This includes, for example, a large number of publications created by university presses located outside the UK, e.g., Harvard University Press located in the United States of America.

Since April 2013, regulations have been in place that extend Legal Deposit to digital publications (referred to in the law as ‘non-print works’). The definition of a digital publication is much broader than that applied to print due to the nature of the digital publishing environment.

For digital publications, the Legal Deposit libraries have to date focused resources on collecting:

• Ebooks and ejournals, the latter largely deposited at article level
• Government publications and parliamentary papers from the UK, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland
• Web sites and online material published on the openly accessible web
• Born digital maps
• Music notation
• Innovative and complex digital publications (‘emerging formats’) that make use of new technology. This work is experimental and highly selective.    

Legal Deposit applies to publications that are made available as multiple copies. An edition consisting of a single copy would usually be out of scope.

Digital Legal Deposit regulations exclude specific types of material:

• Publications that are exclusively composed of recorded sound and/or moving image
• Material that is shared only on private networks, so not available to the general public

The regulations also set out how a digital publication published on the web may be identified as a UK publication for the purposes of Legal Deposit.    

Additionally, Legal Deposit libraries may choose not to collect, or collect only selectively, for types of publication where there is no identifiable benefit in collecting. Examples include greetings cards, diaries, colouring-in books.

Legal Deposit provides the legal framework by which the Legal Deposit libraries, and thereby the nations, can collect, preserve and make available all of UK published communication. It is inclusive in its aim and does not attempt to censor or privilege certain publishers or authors above others.

The publications collected under Legal Deposit are preserved over the long term, and are available to all for research, inspiration and enjoyment.    

The information generated by Legal Deposit activities contributes to the knowledge of publishing across the UK, establishes a national published archive, and informs the British National Bibliography, the official dataset of books and journal titles published or distributed in the United Kingdom and Ireland.

Legal Deposit law provides protections to both libraries and publishers regarding the process of collection, preservation and use of the publications deposited. For example, it ensures that intellectual property rights are not infringed by the lawful activities of depositing and collecting publications.

The main form of access for all material collected under Legal Deposit is at a reading room on the premises managed by a legal deposit library. No charge is made to users for access to legal deposit material, although charges will apply for services such as printing or photocopying.

Print material may be consulted at the reading rooms located in London, Boston Spa, Edinburgh, Aberystwyth, Oxford, Cambridge and Dublin. The university Legal Deposit libraries may also lend part of the collection to library users.

The 2013 regulations enable access to digital material collected under Legal Deposit, setting certain restrictions intended to ensure that access to digital content is similar to print, and to protect the commercial interests of publishers. In line with this, the regulations restrict access to the premises managed by a legal deposit library, and to computers managed by the library. In addition to the reading rooms noted above, digital Legal Deposit may also be accessed at reading rooms in Glasgow (at Kelvin Hall, managed by National Library of Scotland) and Cardiff (at Cardiff University, managed by National Library of Wales).

The regulations did not anticipate the growth of computational research methods now commonly used in research, and do not support data analysis across digital collection items.

The regulations make provision for access to Legal Deposit content for readers with visual impairments.

In order to improve the level of user access to digital material collected under Legal Deposit, the libraries seek permission from individual publishers to extend access to their content.  Where permission is granted, the Libraries are then able to open up access to the Legal Deposit copy.  This is especially important for material collected as part of the UK Web Archive, an important part of Legal Deposit. 

The UK Web Archive harvests websites and other online content from the UK public web, creating a comprehensive annual snapshot and supplementing this with more regular harvests of selected websites.  As the publishers and producers of this material intend it to be made publicly available it is important that we are able to provide public access through the web archive wherever possible.

The following provides an overview of the bodies involved in the governance and management of Legal Deposit in the UK (here is a visual representation of the governance structure):

 

• Department of Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) – UK Legal Deposit legislation and regulation falls under the responsibility of the UK Government Department of Digital, Culture, Media & Sport.  Any change in the regulations need to be approved by the UK Secretary of State for DCMS, appointed by the UK Prime Minister.

 

• Joint Committee on Legal Deposit (JCLD) – JCLD consists of senior members of the Legal Deposit libraries and representatives of publisher bodies such as The Publishers Association and The News Media Association. It is chaired by an independent arbiter.  The committee works for the mutual cooperation and governance in implementing the Regulations and meets every six months.  

 

• Legal Deposit Libraries Committee (LDLC) - LDLC is the library “board” with authority for making joint decisions and agreeing key strategies relating to Legal Deposit.   LDLC meets every six months and membership consists of the Librarian and Chief Executive Officer of each of the six libraries.

 

• Legal Deposit Implementation Group (LDIG) – LDIG is the main executive body authorised by LDLC to manage the implementation, development and continuing operation of Legal Deposit. LDIG has a number of sub-groups to assist with this work, see the governance structure for more details.  Membership consists of senior members of the legal deposit libraries and meets every two months.

 

• Collection Development and Acquisition Subgroup (CDAS) – a subgroup of LDIG charged with coordinating collaborative collecting, digital transition and prioritisation across LDLs.  Membership consists of representatives from all the Legal Deposit libraries and meets every month.

 

• Legal Deposit Reader Services Group (RSG) - a subgroup of LDIG charged with overseeing implementation of non-print Legal Deposit in the library reading rooms and leading on user communications.   Membership consists of representatives from all the Legal Deposit libraries and meets every month.  The Chair of RSG will attend the User Forum on a regular basis and will provide the key point of support and contact with the libraries.

 

• Head of Liaison and Governance for the Legal Deposit Libraries – this post is funded by all six Legal Deposit libraries and is responsible for coordination and communication of legal deposit implementation and governance across the six libraries and supports good communication and administration for the above bodies.

 

• Agency for the Legal Deposit Libraries (ALDL) - the Agency is an independent body established by the five Legal Deposit libraries, with the exception of the British Library.  It requests, processes and distributes print Legal Deposit on behalf of the five libraries and works with all six Legal Deposit libraries to support coordinated collecting of print publications and print-digital transition.  The ALDL is governed by a Board with senior representation from the five libraries.  The board is in turn supported by a Strategy Group and an Operations Group, with representation from each of the libraries.

The following projects, papers and working groups highlight a current activity and challenges within the UK Legal Deposit environment.

DCMS Post Implementation Review and Public Consultation

With the introduction of the 2013 regulations there was a commitment from DCMS to carry out a post-implementation review (PIR) of the regulations to ensure they were fit for purpose.  This was carried out by JCLD and published in 2019 – the report is available on the UK Government website

The PIR concluded that the objectives of the regulation had largely been achieved but recommended the following areas be explored to ensure that the regulations remain relevant and continue to meet users’ requirement:

• inclusion of pre-publication versions of digital publications (digital facsimiles)
• alignment with accessibility and equality legislation and guidelines
• alignment with evolving copyright legislation and regulation
• providing public access to the UK Web Archive by relaxing legal deposit access restrictions for this content

A public consultation is planned for 2023 and will seek views on each of these areas.  It is expected that the User Forum will take a key role in the consultation process.

 

Towards user-Centric evaluation of UK NPLD

This paper published in 2019 reports on the impact of digital Legal Deposit on UK academic Legal Deposit libraries and their users.  The paper makes the case for a user-focused approach to inform planning and implementation of digital Legal Deposit in the UK.  The report has informed the work to establish a User Forum and identified five key tenets, summarised below:

1. The long-term beneficiaries of NPLD are users, not publishers or libraries.
2. The diversity of digital media reflects a major change in the use of information which requires a re-evaluation of the assumption that print remains the most useful reference point for defining access protocols.
3. Publishers are entitled to protect their commercial and legitimate interests, but the significance of Open Access cannot be ignored without infringing upon authors’ intentions.
4. Libraries must be empowered to take actions to respond to emerging information behaviours, with the focus to make collections accessible, usable, and meaningful to users.
5. The first four tenets require continued collaboration between libraries, publishers and user groups.

 

Joint Collecting Framework for Legal Deposit 2023-2030

This is a joint public statement from the six Legal Deposit libraries which provides a high-level overview of the libraries collective collecting priorities. This will be published shortly and is available to the User Forum

 

Value of Legal Deposit Task & Finish Group

Work is being carried out to raise the profile of Legal Deposit and how we articulate and communicate its value and benefit to society.  Current work is focusing on audience and stakeholder mapping, case studies and user stories.   It is expected that the output of this group will be of interest to the User Forum

 

Discovery and access to legal deposit digital content

Discovery and access to most of Legal Deposit digital content – e-books and e-journals - is by searching the online library catalogues in each of the libraries. Access and use are then controlled by an online interface – currently Ericom - which requires the user to accept the terms and conditions of Legal Deposit, and locks the content down in order to limit copying, printing, etc.

The British Library, in consultation with the other Legal Deposit libraries, is developing a more flexible and user-friendly interface for providing access to this content from the library catalogues.  The interface will continue to control access in line the regulations where this is required but aims to offer a better user experience.

The UK Web Archive and Legal Deposit Maps have separate interfaces to support specific user needs and content requirements, such as browsing archived websites over time and using a map-based interface.  Access and use are controlled using the Ericom interface unless public access permission has been granted.

Examples of some of the discovery and access interfaces are provided in the 'What does electronic Legal Deposit look like?' section of this guide.

 

Legal Deposit User Forum

The User Forum is being established to amplify the voice of users of Legal Deposit, and to assist the libraries in taking a user-centred approach in the development of Legal Deposit services.  The forum is expected to represent a range of user voices and experiences.  A number of supporting documents have been drafted to provide a foundation for the User Forum, including Terms of Reference and a Working Agreement for members.

 

Ten Year Anniversary and the Legal Deposit Symposium

2023 will be the ten-year anniversary of the 2013 non-print regulations and the twenty-year anniversary of the 2003 Legal Deposit Libraries Act.  The libraries plan to mark this with a physical event in the second half of 2023 (probably September) in the form of a Legal Deposit Symposium.  The Symposium will look at the international context of Legal Deposit, future aspirations, and what can be done to overcome barriers and challenges to Legal Deposit.  It is hoped that the Symposium will coincide with the launch of the User Forum and that forum members will be able to take part.