Spain: Legal Deposit of Online Content Gets Go Ahead

Here’s an edited version of an announcement about the just approved introduction of legal deposit of online materials from a National Library of Spain (BNE) announcement translated using Google Translate.
The original version of the announcement (in Spanish) is available here.

In the new technological environment, marked mainly by the preeminence [of the] Internet as a medium for disseminating information, the institutions of [national] memory must preserve the documentary heritage [of materials available] through [the] Internet, which has been possible throughout history thanks to legal deposit.
Given the special characteristics of online publications, many of them being created every day, and the impossibility of being thorough in his capture, storage and preservation, this royal decree introduces some important changes for the deposit legal publications.
The initiative of the deposit does not fall on the editors or producers of the publications, but conservation centers, which are responsible to identify, select and track or claiming to preserve the contents.
The deposit is made by automatic pickups websites subject to legal deposit through specialized software (robots) that track and archive Internet, or, when that is not automatic collection possibly by agreeing between publishers and the conservation centers most effective means for transferring the publications subject to deposit Legal conservation centers. In this field-and protected by law until now the BNE has been collecting the web since 2009. In particular, there have been performed 8 massive collections of the .es domain with the collaboration of Internet Archive
Since early 2014 and already using own resources Library, have made ​several selective collections on major events like the death of Adolfo Suarez, the abdication of Juan Carlos I and even the local and regional elections.
The approval of this Royal Decree empowers conservation centers and the National Library of Spain to capture websites and receive by way of legal deposit all online publications part of our documentary heritage, to fulfill the mission of storing and preserving [materials for] future generations.
With the support of the Secretary of State for Telecommunications and the Information Society, through the public company Red.es, the web file BNE is now a reality on which to build the legal deposit of online publications: the transfer of the collection Internet Archive website that collected for the Library or preparation necessary technological infrastructure to make it happen are two examples the joint work of the two institutions.

Direct to Complete Translated Version (via Google Translate)

Filed under: Companies (Publishers/Vendors), Libraries, National Libraries, News, Preservation, Publishing