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Legal deposit
Legal requirement on publications / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Legal deposit is a legal requirement that a person or group submit copies of their publications to a repository, usually a library. The number of copies required varies from country to country. Typically, the national library is the primary repository of these copies. In some countries there is also a legal deposit requirement placed on the government, and it is required to send copies of documents to publicly accessible libraries.
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The legislation covering the requirement varies from country to country, but is often enshrined in copyright law. Until the late 20th century, legal deposit covered only printed and sometimes audio-visual materials, but in the 21st century, most countries have had to extend their legislation to cover digital documents as well. In 2000, UNESCO published a new and enlarged edition of Jean Lunn's 1981 Guidelines for Legal Deposit Legislation, which addresses the issue of electronic formats in its recommendations for the construction of legal deposit legislation.[1][2]
The number of books deposited in national legal repositories increased from 2.4 million in 2018 to 2.7 million in 2019, mainly due to a substantial growth in digital deposits. [3]