Preserving the Digital Heritage: New Legal Deposit Act in Denmark

Abstract

In December 2004 the Danish parliament passed a new act on legal deposit which brought together all regulations concerning the collection and preservation of works published in Denmark, irrespective of type and format. The act covers works published in a physical format, works published on the Internet, radio and television broadcasts, and motion pictures. The responsibility for collecting and preserving this material (apart from motion pictures) is shared by the Royal Library and the State and University Library, and the article describes the procedures by which this responsibility will be discharged. Additional funding was secured to develop a system to meet the challenges of Internet harvesting and web archiving, and the new Danish Net Archive was ready to operate when the new law came into force on 1 July 2005. The article also considers the requirement for long-term preservation of digital material and the regulation of access to it, since both are seen as essential components in Denmark's initiatives to safeguard the nation's cultural heritage and to increase access to it.