FAQ (Legal Deposit)

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WHAT IS LEGAL DEPOSIT?

Legal deposit is a legal obligation that South African publisher (or producers) of all types of documents, including audio-visual publications, have to deposit a certain number of copies of each of their published documents to designated places of legal deposit. It is international practice for governments to require producers of all types of published documents to deposit such. Currently countries worldwide are reviewing and amending their legal deposit laws in order to accommodate the growing importance of audio-visual and electronic media.

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WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF LEGAL DEPOSIT?

The preservation of documentary heritage facilitates access by citizens to all published material generated within their country. Thus legal deposit is one of the pillars of freedom of information.

It enables our country to fulfil two fundamental moral obligations to mankind as a whole. These are:

• to record everything the country has produced (in compliance with the UNESCO / International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions Programme of Universal Bibliographic Control); and
• to ensure that at least one copy of every published document is preserved and available for consultation by scholars, potentially from all over the world.

Legal deposit has more specific benefits for creators and for publishers or producers:

• it ensures that a creator’s work is not lost for posterity and that it is available for future research;
• it has the potential to make all users of places of legal deposit aware of what has been published or produced;
• it forms the basis for the compilation of national bibliographies and other databases that alert potential users nationally and internationally to the existence of books and other documents, and thereby promote their distribution and sales; and
• it forms the basis for the collection of international book production statistics by UNESCO which is a valuable source of business information to the book trade. It can also develop into such for other media.

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WHAT IS A DOCUMENT?

A “document” is any object that is intended to store or convey information in textual, graphic, visual, auditory or other intelligible format through any medium.

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WHICH DOCUMENTS ARE DEPOSITED?

Documents that are produced to be generally available to the public. This includes any document that:

• is intended to be issued and distributed to the South African public;
• stores or conveys information in textual, visual, auditory, electronic or any other format;
• is a revised version or edition of a document that is significantly different from the previous version or edition in respect of its information content or physical presentation; and
• is published in South Africa or adapted for the South African public.

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WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF LEGAL DEPOSIT?

The purpose of legal deposit is to collect, preserve and make available to present and future users the documents that contain the intellectual and cultural heritage of the country.