Facet Publishing announce the publication of Electronic Legal Deposit: Shaping the Library Collections of the Future, edited by Paul Gooding and Melissa Terras

Legal deposit libraries, the national and academic institutions who systematically preserve our written cultural record, have recently been mandated with expanding their collection practices to include digitised and born-digital materials. Although a growing international activity, there has been little consideration of the impact of e-legal deposit on the 21st Century library, or on its present or future users. This edited collection is a timely opportunity to bring together international authorities who are placed to explore the social, institutional and user impacts of e-legal deposit.

Electronic Legal Deposit: Shaping the Library Collections of the Future presents a thorough overview of this worldwide issue at an important juncture in the history of library collections in our changing information landscape. Chapters draw on evidence gathered from real-world case studies produced in collaboration with leading libraries, researchers and practitioners including Bodleian Libraries, National Library of Sweden and the National Archives of Zimbabwe.

Regulations governing electronic legal deposit often also prescribe how these materials can be accessed. The viewpoints of a variety of stakeholders are considered in this book including library users, researchers, and publishers. Overviews of the complex digital preservation and access issues that surround e-legal deposit materials, such as web archives and interactive media, are also featured.

Dr Jessica Gardner, University Librarian & Director of Library Services at Cambridge University Libraries said of the text: ‘Electronic Legal Deposit: Shaping the Library Collections of the Future brings together different voices, UK and international, to capture the joint endeavour between libraries and publishers to systematically collect and preserve the national collection of electronic publications, from websites to e-books. Critically, the editors use those contrasting voices to challenge the current model, resulting in a volume that both records the story so far and issues a call for policy change in the future evolution of e-legal deposit; a future shaped more clearly by the needs of research and access’.

The book will be invaluable reading for practitioners and researchers in national and research libraries, those developing digital library infrastructures and potential users of these services. This volume presents a rigorous account of the implementation and impact of electronic legal deposit and how it is shaping our digital library collections.

- End

Press and review copies contact:
Sinéad Murphy, Marketing & Sales Manager, Facet Publishing
Tel: +44 (0)20 7255 0594
Email: sinead.murphy@facetpublishing.co.uk

Notes:

Electronic Legal Deposit: Shaping the Library Collections of the Future | Oct 2020 | 256pp | Hardback: 9781783303779 | £55 | http://www.facetpublishing.co.uk/title.php?id=303779

Paul Gooding is Senior Lecturer in Information Studies at the University of Glasgow. His research focuses on the impact of digital library collections on institutions and users. He was Principal Investigator on Digital Library Futures (2017-2019), an AHRC-funded project to analyse the impact of Non-Print Legal Deposit on UK academic libraries. Paul holds an MA in Library and Information Studies (2007) and a PhD in Digital Humanities (2014) from University College London. From 2014 to 2018 he was Research Fellow in Digital Humanities at the University of East Anglia, where he founded and led the UEA Digital Humanities incubator, and before undertaking his PhD worked as a librarian for BBC Sport.

Melissa Terras is the Professor of Digital Cultural Heritage at the University of Edinburgh‘s College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences, leading digital aspects of CAHSS research as Director of the Edinburgh Centre for Data, Culture and Society, and Director of Research in the Edinburgh Futures Institute. Her research focuses on the use of computational techniques to enable research in the arts, humanities, and wider cultural heritage and information environment that would otherwise be impossible. She previously directed UCL Centre for Digital Humanities in UCL Department of Information Studies, where she was employed from 2003-2017. Books include “Image to Interpretation: An Intelligent System to Aid Historians in Reading the Vindolanda Texts” (2006, Oxford University Press), “Defining Digital Humanities: A Reader” (Ashgate 2013), and “Picture-Book Professors: Academia and Children’s Literature" (Cambridge University Press 2018). She is a Fellow of the Alan Turing Institute, and Trustee of the National Library of Scotland. You can generally find her on twitter @melissaterras.

The book is published by Facet Publishing and is available to order from NBN International | Tel: +44 (0)1572 202301| Fax: +44 (0)1752 202333 | Email: orders@nbninternational.com | Web: www.facetpublishing.co.uk | Mailing Address: NBN International, Airport Business Centre, Thornbury Road, Plymouth, PL6 7PP | It will be available in North America from the American Library Association (https://www.alastore.ala.org/content/electronic-legal-deposit-shaping-li...).