Whether or not a legal deposit library should be established for Northern Ireland should be contingent primarily on the responses from the province. It is timely that the current arrangements for deposit of print publications should be re-examined in terms of their efficiency and effectiveness, and that the costs of legal deposit to all parties should be clarified. The Association welcomes the consultation document as a substantial contribution to addressing these issues, and is pleased to offer the following comments. The numbers in brackets in the comments which follow correspond to the paragraph numbers in the Consultation Paper 2. If the case for a comprehensive national archive is accepted, statutory underpinning for collection, preservation and access must follow.
Statutory provision is the guarantee of the integrity of the national archive.
There is a danger in relying on single copies of anything, as there is in concentrating an entire archive in a single location. This also helps in terms of geographical access. Digitisation may have an eventual role in securing these objectives. While advocating legal underpinning for deposit, the Association believes the system should as far as possible rest on goodwill and a common understanding of the purposes and benefits of legal deposit, rather than the threat of sanction. However it needs to be borne in mind that legal deposit is not the norm for non-print publishers, and may be resisted by some if extended to cover their publications.