The UK’s digital black hole
Jinfo Blog

8th October 2009

By Penny Crossland

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There was rather worrying news this week in an article in The Guardian (http://digbig.com/5bakae) which highlighted the fact that several year’s worth of digital material seems to have been lost in the ether due to the delay in implementing the Legal Deposit Libraries Act of 2003. This means that the online research, literature and journalism which should have been collected and archived by the six libraries that were given legal authority to do so (British Library, National Library of Wales, Bodleian Library, Cambridge University Library, Trinity College Dublin and the National Library of Scotland), has not been deposited electronically, potentially leaving five years‘ worth of gaps in our collections. Until the Act comes into force, deposit libraries are having to broker voluntary arrangements with publishers, businesses and government departments in order to archive their websites and other electronic material – not a satisfactory solution. Does this digital hole actually amount to a critical loss of knowledge? There are some who argue that most material of value is still available in printed format and and sent to the legal Deposit Office of the British Library within one month of publication, as required by law. However, there is no doubt that how we obtain information has radically changed and that digital publications and websites have become an important part of UK cultural life. If nothing else, The British Library has not been able to deal with this change and that is a shame. In the meantime, the UK Web Archive ( http://www.webarchive.org.uk/ukwa/) is one of the organisations in the UK which is valiantly trying to plug the gap. Since 2005, it has collected and archived more than 5,000 websites considered to be of historical, social and cultural interest. The consortium however struggles to obtain permission to archive sites from almost 50% of website owners it contacts, making regulation the only way forward.

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