dépôt légal à l'ère numérique (rapport IPA juillet 2014)

Digital Legal Deposit thAn IPA Special Report, 24 July 2014 1. INTRODUCTION Legal deposit schemes require publishers to submit copies of books and journals to a national library. Most nations collect their published output as systematically and comprehensively as possible, making them available to current and future generations of researchers. Legal deposit is considered a vital part in preserving a country’s cultural heritage. While national approaches to legal deposit developed over centuries, the digital age has meant that countries suddenly need to adapt legal deposit schemes so that they work securely and effectively for electronic publications. Around the world, policies and processes are being developed and implemented which allow digital content, whether in the form of e-books, journals, blogs or website content, to be collected and archived. Given the many initiatives in this area, this report is not intended to be comprehensive. Instead, we examine a range of current approaches to digital legal deposit. We focus on Germany, Netherlands, the UK, France and Italy, detailing the rationale behind their schemes and explaining how they work in practice for publishers. 2. LEGAL DEPOSIT: FROM ITS ORIGINS TO THE DIGITAL AGE The concept of legal deposit has existed since 1537, when King Francois I of France ruled that no book could be sold in the country unless a copy was given to the royal library at the Château de Blois.