Born Digital Legal Deposit Policies and Practices

In 2014, the authors surveyed the born digital content legal deposit policies and practices in 17 different countries and presented the results of the survey at the 2015 International News Media Conference hosted by the National Library of Sweden in Stockholm, Sweden, April 15-16, 2015. Three years later, the authors expanded their team and updated the survey in order to assess progress in creating or improving national policies and in implementing practices for preserving born digital content. The 2017 survey reach has been broadened to include countries that did not participate in the 2014 survey. To optimise survey design, and allow for comparability of results with previous surveys, the authors briefly review 17 efforts over the last 12 years to understand the state of digital legal deposit and broader digital preservation policies (a deeper analysis will be provided in a future paper), and then set out the logic behind the current survey.