The KB E-Depot: Permanent Access to the Records of Science

Abstract

Electronic journals have come to dominate the field of academic literature, and it is of great importance to the international academic system that this electronic intellectual output is preserved and that it remains accessible in perpetuity. The traditional principles for the archiving of printed academic literature no longer suffice in the digital world. These are based on national frontiers: each national deposit library preserves its own national academic heritage. Regarding electronic publications, however, the geographical criterion is not very useful and the geographical provenance of material is irrelevant, since electronic data exist independently of location: current international journals often have no longer a fatherland that can be easily identified. In this presentation I will discuss the policy and ambitions of the National Library of the Netherlands (KB) regarding electronic archiving of electronic publications.