Editing Legal deposit (section)

{{Short description|Legal requirement on publications}}
'''Legal deposit''' is a legal requirement that a person or group submit copies of their [[publication]]s to a repository, usually a [[library]]. The number of copies required varies from country to country. Typically, the [[national library]] is the primary repository of these copies. In some countries there is also a legal deposit requirement placed on the government, and it is required to send copies of documents to publicly accessible libraries.
[[File:Books in legal repositories 2018–2020 (WIPO).svg|thumb|Books in legal depositories in 2018–2020]]
The legislation covering the requirement varies from country to country, but is often enshrined in [[copyright law]]. Until the late 20th century, legal deposit covered only [[printed]] and sometimes [[audio-visual]] materials, but in the 21st century, most countries have had to extend their legislation to cover [[digital document]]s as well. In 2000, [[UNESCO]] published a new and enlarged edition of Jean Lunn's ''1981 Guidelines for Legal Deposit Legislation'', which addresses the issue of electronic formats in its recommendations for the construction of legal deposit legislation.<ref name="ifla">{{cite web | title=Guidelines for Legal Deposit Legislation | website=International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) | date=20 October 2000 | url=http://archive.ifla.org/VII/s1/gnl/legaldep1.htm | access-date=5 May 2020|edition=Revised, enlarged and updated|quote=A revised, enlarged and updated edition of the 1981 publication by Dr. Jean LUNN IFLA Committee on Cataloguing|first=Jules |last=Larivière|location=Paris }}</ref><ref name="unesco">{{cite web | title=Guidelines for Legal Deposit Legislation | publisher=UNESCO | date=20 October 2000 | url=https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000121413 | access-date=5 May 2020|edition=revised, enlarged and updated|quote=A revised, enlarged and updated edition of the 1981 publication by Dr. Jean LUNN IFLA Committee on Cataloguing|first=Jules |last=Larivière|location=Paris|format=pdf }}</ref>

The number of books deposited in national legal repositories increased from 2.4 million in 2018 to 2.7 million in 2019, mainly due to a substantial growth in digital deposits. <ref>{{Cite web |date=2023 |title=The Global Publishing Industry in 2020 |url=https://www.wipo.int/publications/en/details.jsp?id=4616&plang=EN |access-date=2023-11-13 |website=www.wipo.int |publisher=[[WIPO]] |doi= 10.34667/tind.46277|language=en|author1= International Publishers Association (IPa)|author2= World Intellectual Property Organization}}</ref>