The Revision of the Finnish Legal Deposit legislation
The Committee on Legal Deposit has completed a proposition for a new Act on Legal Deposit.
Reports of the Ministry of Education, Finland 2003:14
The law should cover
- Printed publications (1-6 copies of each item)
- Sound recordings and other recordings such as CD-ROMs and DVDs (1 copy)
- Films, videos and other recordings containing moving images (1 copy)
- Online electronic publications of Finnish origin (1 copy)
- Radio and television programmes (1 copy)
As with the current legislation, the aim is to preserve comprehensively cultural products for the use of researchers and other potential users.
Printed publications
The producer of printed materials should deposit six copies of each publication with the National Library; five of these are then distributed to other deposit copy libraries. The deposit requirement for newspapers would be one copy and for ephemeral printed publications two copies.
Sound recordings and other recordings
Sound recordings and other recordings such as CD-ROMs and DVDs would be preserved at the National Library of Finland.
Films, videos and other recordings containing moving images
Films, videos and other recordings containing moving images would be preserved at the Finnish Film Archive.
Online electronic materials
Online electronic materials would be collected and stored by the National Library of Finland. The publisher would be obliged to enable retrieval of the materials or submit them to the National Library.
The amendment of the Copyright Act (effective fom the beginning of 2006) gives the National Library the right to collect freely accessible online electronic materials. The right to make these materials available to the public within the premises of the Library or other legal deposit libraries will be defined in the new Legal Deposit Act which is currently under preparation.
Television and radio programmes
Television and radio programmes would be recorded from the transmission by the Finnish Film Archive.
The aim concerning online electronic materials and television and radio programmes would be to preserve a representative sample of published and transmitted materials for research and other similar purposes.
The revision of the legislation is expected to take effect in 2008.
