Discusses the issue of whether CD-ROMs and other electronic products should be brought within the scope of existing UK laws for legal deposit. Focuses on the publication in 1997, by the Department of National Heritage and other UK bodies of:
Legal deposit of publications: a consultation paper
. This seeks the views of interested parties in the library and information, publishing, recording, film making, and educational sectors before formulating its legislative proposals. Considers the main difficulty to lie with non-tangible electronic publications, such as online services and Internet based services, which are constantly changing and do not remain in a stable form long enough to be catalogued and preserved for future generations. The problems caused by the advent of distributed client/server computing, the Internet and of publications available on the World Wide Web which are hypertext linked to other Internet sites, are noted briefly in the document but no solutions offered. Other issues covered include: how many copies should be deposited; whether the better endowed universities should continue to be subsidized; whether legislation to cover new media could be made without needing fresh legislation; and the need to evaluate the cost of the legal deposit process. The document is accessible via the World Wide Web (URL
http://www.heritage.gov.uk
).
