Media Publications on electronic data carriers

As text-based or audio-visual representations, media publications on electronic data carriers (e.g. CD-ROMs) which are distributed in physical form fall within the collection mandate of the German National Library and as such are bound by the legal deposit obligation upon Germany-based publishers and other manufacturers.

To ensure that the media publications on electronic data carriers can be permanently archived (long-term archiving) and accessed (long-term accessibility), they should be submitted as instructed by the Library in a form which is suitable for the generation of archive copies. At the request of the Library, technical protection measures and access limitations on the deposit version should be removed, or removal tools should be made available. If this is only possible by causing a disproportionately large amount of work or expense, it may alternatively be possible, after prior agreement, to transmit the files used as the basis of the manufacture of the electronic data carriers to the German National Library, or to make these available.

Any accessories issued in conjunction with such media publications are also to be collected and deposited. These include e.g. 

• Original containers, documentation and manuals
• Any hard and software required for their use, if issued in conjunction with the electronic publications by the same publisher or producer
• All associated parts and items, even if such items do not fall themselves within the collection mandate. This applies in particular to equipment and tools which are not commonly available on the market, which are necessary to use the media publication or to generate an archivable version, and which are also issued by the same publisher (subject to the legal deposit obligation)

Where a number of different editions of an electronic publication containing identical content are issued by the same publisher or manufacturer, the following descending order of preference applies for deposit: hard disk - CD - DVD - Flash memory (USB stick, SD card, etc.) - floppy disk. In the case of different system environments, the following order applies: Windows - Mac OS - Linux, Solaris - other.

If an electronic data carrier is available in a network-compatible and a non-network-compatible version, the network-compatible version is to be submitted. If it is offered in a stand-alone and a multilicence version, the multilicence version is preferred. The deposit obligation applies only for the stand-alone licence, however.

All details required for bibliographic indexing of the media publications should be communicated to the German National Library. A completed bibliographic note should also be submitted along with the first issue of journals.

Law regarding the German National Library (available only in German)
Legal Deposit Regulation (available only in German)
Collection guidelines (available only in German)