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Legal deposit in the UK

Material published and distributed in the United Kingdom and in the Republic of Ireland must be deposited in the six legal libraries and archives.  This includes self-published books.

These six UK libraries are:

1. The British Library
2. The Bodleian Library, Oxford
3. The University Library, Cambridge
4. The National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh
5. The Library of Trinity College, Dublin
6. The National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth

Publishers must send one copy to the British Library within one month of publication. The other five libraries have the right to claim those publications from the publishers and distributors. The current legal basis in the United Kingdom is the Copyright Act of 1911, and in Ireland, the Copyright and Related Rights Act of 2000.

A publisher is anyone who issues or distributes publications to the public. All printed publications come within the scope of legal deposit. A code of practice exists for the voluntary deposit of electronic publications. This voluntary scheme fills a gap in the national published archive before legislation is introduced for the deposit of non-print publications. Titles published elsewhere but distributed in the United Kingdom and Ireland, irrespective of the place of publication or printing, the nature and size of the imprint or the extent of distribution, are still subject to the need for legal deposit.

What do you get in exchange?

Legal deposit has worked for almost four centuries with the copies made available to library users in their reading rooms. You become part of the national heritage as soon as you deposit your work. Publications are recorded in the world-class catalogues (www.blaise.com) for researchers and readers and listed in the British National Bibliography (BNB), which is used by librarians and the book trade for stock selection.

'The purpose of Legal Deposit is to ensure that the nation's published output (and thereby its intellectual record and future published heritage) is collected systematically and as comprehensively as possible to make it available to current researchers within the libraries of the legal deposit system and to preserve the material for the use of future generations. The system dates back several hundred years and has been a vital element in preserving and making available the published record of previous generations for the researchers of today and the future.'                       The British Library

Where to send legal deposit copies in UK:

If you are a customer for our self-publishing service, we would normally undertake the legal deposit for you.

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