5 - Electronic Legal Deposit in Sweden: the Evolution of Digital Publications and Legislative Systems

Summary

Introduction

Recent years have seen much progress and change in both legal and procedural approaches to safeguarding Sweden's digital published output, at a time when Sweden's publishing environment is rapidly changing and evolving. This chapter gives a summary account of the design of Swedish legal deposit legislation and proposes areas that need to be changed in order to achieve its stated purposes. The chapter begins with a description of the history and implementation of Swedish legal deposit legislation. It then describes the design of Swedish legal deposit legislation and its relevance to the digitisation of media outputs. We identify problems linked to the recent evolution of media in relation to the design of current legal deposit legislation, including media that falls outside the current legislation, difficulties in determining the requirement to deposit, and the limits of collecting. In spite of the National Library's extensive and largely automated collection under the E-Legal Deposit Act, these issues mean there are still significant parts of electronically published material produced in Sweden that are not being collected. The chapter concludes with a Nordic outlook that summarises the issues that libraries in our close neighbouring countries also face in the preservation of digital publications and media and highlighting the issues that Sweden will face should the legislation not be adapted. We call for revised legislation and its corresponding regulations, harmonising the Library Act and E-Legal Deposit Act to ensure the preservation of Sweden's digital publications for posterity.

The history and context of Swedish legal deposit legislation

In 2015 the National Library of Sweden (the National Library) was commissioned by the Swedish government to draft a proposal for a national library strategy for all publicly financed libraries. In 2017 the National Library was also commissioned to carry out a study on the role, design and relevance of Swedish legal deposit legislation in relation to the evolution of digital and print media. The study was submitted to the Swedish government in October 2017 and emphasised the importance of adapting the Swedish legal deposit legislation to today's media landscape. It was therefore natural that these findings would contribute to the evolving National Library strategy. The National Library strategy, which was submitted to the Swedish government in 2019, highlights among other things the importance of updating the legal deposit legislation and adapting it to present-day circumstances.