Legal deposit fourteen years after: how, when, how ‘much’ and why

Abstract

A recent survey on the state of the Italian regional legal deposit, conducted by the AIB Commission on national services and libraries, prompted the author to further discuss the theme. Starting from the comments on some specific questions asked by the authors of the survey to the depository libraries, the considerations affect the whole topic of legal deposit fourteen years after the law came into force. Therefore, various issues are discussed, such as the harvesting of born-digital documents, not yet implemented; the new forms of digital publishing that may be critical in deposit management; the need to modify some current models for the collection and preservation of legal deposit documents, since exhaustiveness is no longer achievable nor sustainable. At the same time, the author emphasises the need of facing the new challenges posed by both digital publishing and digital communication, including social media, in order not to suffer the loss of essential evidence of the contemporary society and its forms of expression.