Authorities and Electronic Publishing: An Overview of the Efforts to Apply Library Legislation and Established Organizational Patterns to Electronic Publications

The emergence of electronic publishing has brought a need to revise established rules and standards within the information sector. Several countries have revised or are about to revise their legal deposit laws in order to safeguard new forms of published information. One of the first of these appeared in Norway in 1990; delivery is likely to be replaced by access during the active time of online service, after which the final version of the database will be delivered for archiving. There is a risk that countries such as Sweden, where legal deposit applies only to electronic documents such as CD-ROMs that are distributed through the usual retail channels, will lose that part of their cultural heritage that is accessible online only. ‘Metadata’ – bibliographical and other information on the document – should help to ensure that it continues to be accessible. ISO work on standardization for bibliographic references to electronic documents is nearly complete, and IFLA has updated the rules for standard bibliographic description for computer files.