National Libraries have the prominent task to collect, preserve and make available the national output of published information as comprehensively and for as long a term as possible. With the advent of digital media, libraries are confronted with the challenge to develop new strategies for fulfilling their task.

A vital support for their collecting activity is a legal deposit which, as a rule, is laid down by law, and which requests the publisher to deposit samples of a publication basically without remuneration. New media are therefore required to be included in legal deposit legislation.

By updating the Austrian Media Act, with the new law being effective by 1st of March 2009, the Austrian legislator has recently mandated the Austrian National Library to collect and archive online media (i.e. media published on the web), in addition to traditional printed and digital offline media (i.e. media on a physical carrier such as CD-ROM, DVD or diskette), the latter having already been included in legal deposit legislation in the year 2000.

These new legal provisions will be presented, compared and commented upon in consideration of basic issues which arise in connection with the preservation of digital information and by focusing on related international developments of mainly contractual and legislative nature.

Bestand: http://permalink.obvsg.at/AC07658107