National Libraries and Bibliography

• Main Author: Trond Valberg
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Norway; sami
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.150.8453; http://www.ifla.org/IV/ifla74/papers/095-Valberg-en.pdf

It can be argued that relatively few countries in the world can match the countries of Scandinavia when it comes to the coverage of audiovisual and multimedia material in their legislation. This paper introduces the legal deposit acts of Denmark, Sweden and Norway, and describes the similarities between them. For each country, it lists the institutions which collect these materials, and the national bibliographies which are produced. Some interesting differences in practice are described, and the challenges of collecting documents from the Internet are explained. The paper concludes by stressing the importance of continuous updating of legislation and practice to keep pace with the preservation of cultural heritage in a rapidly changing society. Scandinavia Scandinavia is a region in Northern Europe which includes the kingdoms of Denmark, Norway and Sweden. Sometimes, however, the other Nordic countries are included due to close historic and cultural relations. Such relations are obvious looking at the three Scandinavian countries as well, furthermore exemplified by the political unions of Denmark-Norway (1536-1814) or Sweden-Norway (1814-1905). The total population of 19 million is just a little more than the population of the Netherlands, but comparing the areas gives a quite different result since Scandinavia is more than 20 times bigger than the Netherlands. (In fact that is also the case if you only compare Norway and Sweden with the Netherlands.) Even though different languages are spoken in each of the countries, most people will understand each other nearly perfect. On the other hand, the Sami languages, which are spoken by the