ISSN 1443-0568 | no. 69 | June 2004
Building a National Collection: Legal Deposit
Legal deposit enables the National Library to fulfil one of its primary functions as defined in the National Library Act 1960—‘to maintain and develop a national collection of library material, including a comprehensive collection of library material relating to Australia and the Australian people’.
Under the provisions of the Copyright Act 1968 (Cwlth) Section 201, legal deposit establishes the legal obligation for ‘the publisher of any library material that is published in Australia… [to] cause a copy of the material to be delivered at his or her own expense to the National Library’.
Put simply, the Library is entitled to one free copy of every work published in Australia. However, it should be noted that it cannot be any copy, it has to be a ‘best copy’. The Copyright Act specifies that it ‘shall be a copy of the whole material (including any illustrations), be finished and coloured, and bound, sewed, stitched or otherwise fastened together, in the same manner as the best copies of that material are published and be on the best paper on which that material is printed’.
It is also worth looking at what the Copyright Act defines as ‘library material’. According to the Act, ‘library material means a book, periodical, newspaper, pamphlet, sheet of letter-press, sheet of music, map, plan, chart or table, being a literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work or an edition of such a work’.
This definition of ‘library material’ is now somewhat outdated. Of particular note is the omission of electronic publications. When the Act was first written, electronic publications did not exist; however these days more and more material is being published either online or on CD-ROM. The legal deposit provisions of the Copyright Act 1968 are currently under review and it is hoped that electronic publications may be included in the future.
Not all publishers are aware of their legal deposit obligation, which means the Library has to have procedures in place to identify material that has not been deposited. When the Library finds that it has not received a published item on legal deposit it claims the publication from the publisher. This ensures that the collection of currently published Australiana is as complete as possible, and at the same time, reminds publishers of the requirements of legal deposit.
It would be impossible for the Library to collect, process and preserve everything that would technically be covered by the Copyright Act, so the Library also has a Collection Development Policy. This policy provides detailed guidance on the types of material included or not included in the collection. If you wish to see the Library’s Collection Development Policy, you can find it on the Internet at <www.nla.gov.au/policy/cdp/>
The National Library receives approximately 11 000 legal deposit items a year. These items are representative of the full scope of Australian publishing, from local histories through to scientific publications, and everything in between. This is a very solid basis for a comprehensive collection of Australian publications and provides the means for research into all aspects of Australian life, history, culture, and artistic, commercial, technical and scientific endeavour.
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