4 - Bibliographic Control in Zimbabwe: the Conundrum of Legal Deposit in the age of Digital Technologies

Summary

Introduction

This chapter describes the functions of current legislation in ensuring compliance with legal deposit laws of Zimbabwe. It seeks to highlight the challenges that the existing legal deposit laws face vis-à-vis the open access regime. It analyses the legislation for bibliographic compilation in the context of the shifts in the global knowledge landscape. The chapter discusses the weaknesses of the current law with reference to current trends in the legal deposit of multimedia formats. It also examines how bibliographic control can underpin national development goals concerning teaching, learning and research. The authors explain how the absence of a print and online version of a national bibliography affects collection development and scholarly research, and explore the challenges of harmonising print and electronic records in the context of digital divide. Recommendations on possible strategies to utilise modern technologies to capture, process and preserve library records as national heritage in Zimbabwe are suggested.

Universal bibliographic control (UBC) as a global system for the control and exchange of bibliographic information acknowledges the resource discovery metadata requirements of modern, global-scale users of information (Dunsire, Hillmann, and Phipps, 2012). The sheer size of global bibliographic control is enormous, as it encompasses the creation and maintenance of a complete record of the sum of human knowledge. Žumer (2009) defines a national bibliography as the accumulation of the authoritative and comprehensive records of the national imprints of a country, which is published regularly and with the least possible delay.

Thapa (2009, 57) views bibliographic control as the activities involved in the process of creating, organising, managing and maintaining the files of bibliographic records, for example the library or archival materials or sources listed in an index, or database, or virtual repository. As such, the locatability, findability, discoverability, accessibility, retrievability and shareability of scientific scholarly content is possible through effective bibliographic control because of scientific description and subject access through uniform catalogue codes, classification schemes and name authorities to enhance precision. Bibliographic tools are published in line with the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions’ (IFLA’s) International Standard Bibliographic Description (ISBD) published in 2011.