Digitised content

The legal collection definition of "…all text, image and sound-based works which are made available in public networks…" includes the digitised versions of older publications which are held on the Internet. The submission obligation therefore covers e. g. all German libraries, archives and other institutions which make authorised digital versions of their stocks available on the net, and publishing houses based in Germany which are digitising their retrospective stocks. Media publications, the original editions of which were not subject to the collection brief, must now be also collected in their digitised form (e.g. digitised versions of works published before 1913, of publications printed abroad but not falling within the collection mandate or of manuscripts), as was previously also the case with reprints, if publication in Germany is carried out by an institution itself based in Germany.