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Home  »   About Us  »  Library Operations  »  Legal Deposit

UK and Irish Legal Deposit Libraries

There are six legal deposit libraries in the United Kingdom and Ireland:

The British Library Bodleian Library, Oxford Cambridge University Library

National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh The Library of Trinity College, Dublin National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth

The five libraries in Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh, Dublin and Aberystwyth are entitled to claim free of charge a copy of everything published in the United Kingdom, provided they make a claim within a year of the date of publication. These libraries use the Agency for the Legal Deposit Libraries which acts on their behalf in claiming materials which are due, and serves as the statutory depot for the receipt of material acquired under the terms of the Legal Deposit Libraries Act 2003.

As noted above, the British Library has a slightly different privilege in that it is the responsibility of publishers to send a copy of their publications without a written claim being required. It has its own Legal Deposit Office. The six libraries have produced a leaflet on legal deposit which summarises the main points and gives contact information.

All printed works are covered by the Legal Deposit Libraries Act 2003 including books, pamphlets, single sheets, maps, printed music, journals and newspapers. The Act of 2003 provides for supplementary regulations to be introduced to extend legal deposit to include non-print publications. At present, the Code of Practice for the Voluntary Deposit of Non-Print Publications, which has been in effect since January 2000, allows the legal deposit libraries to request a copy of certain categories of non-print publication.

It should be noted that the requirement to deposit an item does not depend on its having been allocated an International Standard Book Number (ISBN) or Serial Number (ISSN), but on whether or not it can be considered to have been published. A work is said to have been published when copies of it are issued to the public. The place of publication or printing, the nature of the imprint and size of distribution are immaterial. It is the act of issuing or distributing to the public in the United Kingdom or the Republic of Ireland which renders a work liable to deposit.