Legal deposit, the new bicycle

Abstract

The authoress, who on behalf of the AIB, personally followed the reform process of Italian legislation on legal deposit, analyzes the main critical points of the new regulations in force since 2nd September 2006. The most immediate objectives of the article are the clarification of some procedures, and the encouragement to reflect especially in view of the decisions that each single region will be called to make, by June 2nd next, to implement the "regional archive of publications" that will cooperate with the "national" archive linked to the two central national libraries of Rome and Florence, the State Record Library, the National Institute for Graphics and other specialized institutions. At a more general level, the authoress starts from an analysis of some specific problems regarding the different types of documents subject to the law and emphasises some basic deficiencies in reference to the latter. She wonders about the possibility of implementing provisions for making it work better beginning with some minimum instruments that it offers, as long as it is correctly interpreted and there is a desire to rationalize the system, that otherwise risks turning out to be almost unmanageable and uselessly costly. In this sense it seems to be essential that depositary libraries are given the chance of a "conscious purchase” of the documents that reach them - not before having definitively clarified the problems highlighted, in the stage of initial application of the law, in relation to some "untypical" documentary types.  Within a framework of cooperation between various institutions, it will then be essential to work for achieving a system of "deposit and conservation at various levels" that considers the different peculiarities of the national archive and of the regional archive, and that develops them within this rationalization, and the achievement of an added value for users. Finally it is hoped that there will shortly be a privileged occasion for confrontation between all the subjects interested in the good functioning of the law, identifiable in the Commission for the legal deposit as described in article 42 of the regulation.