Introduction

When the Law regarding the German National Library (DNBG), passed on 22 June 2006, came into force (BGB1. I P. 1338), the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek received the task of collecting, cataloguing, indexing and archiving non-physical media works (online publications). The expanded legal collection mandate has necessitated revised versions of the Legal Deposit Regulation (PflAV) and the collection guidelines.

The collection field of online publications covers all text, image and sound-based works made available on public networks. The submission obligation covers both Internet publications with corresponding printed versions and also web-specific media works. Examples of online publications include electronic magazines, eBooks, university dissertations, digitised content, music files and also websites.

There are restrictions to the collection brief.

Temporary pre-publications, pure software or application tools, and radio and TV programmes are not collected.

Online publications which only serve private or commercial purposes are not collected either. This basically means websites consisting e. g. of private photos and descriptions of holidays which are only of interest to private individuals, or presentations of a company's goods and services which are only relevant for customers. However, if the web pages contain topical or personal information which is of public interest, e. g. about people in the public eye or about small livestock breeding, these then come under the collection brief of the German National Library.

The collection mandate applies correspondingly for music publications collected in the Deutsches Musikarchiv in Berlin, a department of the German National Library.

Suitable procedures for the large-scale collection, cataloguing and archiving of online publications will be developed gradually. The object of the current stage of development is the collection of individual online publications with corresponding printed versions. Here the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek assesses and catalogues each document and distinct publication as an individual work. In a further step, automatic procedures are being developed for the collection of whole groups of objects, such as entire websites.

The staged procedure includes the following steps:

 
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