Electronic Legal Deposit Shaping the Library Collections of the Future

This edited collection provides a timely account of the social, institutional and user impacts of e-legal deposit. Since legal deposit regulations were introduced in the United Kingdom and Germany in the 17th Century, societies have benefitted from the systematic preservation of our written cultural record by a small number of trusted national and academic libraries. This book brings together some of the leading contemporary international authorities on legal deposit to explore two primary questions. First, what is the impact of electronic legal deposit on the 21st Century library? And second, what does the future hold for libraries as legal deposit collections meet the digital age? The 2013 announcement of e-Legal Deposit brought, for the first time, written information online under the purview of the UK Legal Deposit Libraries, a trend evident across the world. This was heralded as a vital step in preserving the UK’s “digital universe”, a grand assertion that requires careful interrogation.