National repository initiatives in Europe

Abstract

This paper aims at clarifying the role of repositories in some European countries in preserving research and other library materials in the country. The functional environment of repositories varies from country to country. Typically, the main actor in preserving national literature and national print heritage is the national library institution. The main means of this for national libraries has been legal deposit legislation, which in some countries is almost as old as printing. While the paper focuses on the development of the National Depository Library in Finland, examples in this paper are also drawn from the repositories in Norway, Estonia, and Ilê de France, Paris. The driving concept behind participating in these repository programs is cost reduction through the rationalization of storage and access on a regional—and even national—level. In this model, the repository creates one collection, which it owns and maintains. This allows the depository to employ deduplication and other strategies to rationalize storage. The role of the repository then is to keep the material available and serve as the library of last resort for many research materials.