All publishers in Tasmania have to deposit copies of their publications with the State Library of Tasmania (as part of LINC Tasmania) and the National Library of Australia to comply with the Libraries Act 1984.
These deposited items help build Tasmania's Heritage Collections so that every Tasmanian publication will be available for future generations. To preserve deposit copies, LINC Tasmania normally purchases at least one more copy of any Tasmanian publication likely to be heavily used.
The person, organisation or company which distributes copies of a publication, is responsible for legal deposit. This includes commercial publishers, authors if the work is self-published, plus private individuals, clubs, churches, societies and organisations that issue publications. Legal deposit is not the responsibility of printers or booksellers, unless they are also publishers.
Publications include books, periodicals, newspapers, maps and plans, sheet music, sound and video recordings, and anything else which records or reproduces words, sounds or images. An item is published if copies of it are sold or otherwise distributed to the public. This includes family histories, election leaflets, handbooks, manuals and local newsletters. Computer disks, posters, bands' demo cassettes should be deposited.
If your publication is published in different formats, the Libraries Act specifies that the deposited copy must be the best copy published. For example, if both a hard cover and a paperback edition of a book are published, a copy of the hard cover edition must be deposited.
Legal deposit applies equally to electronic publications. Electronic publications created and published in Tasmania are easily lodged for legal deposit via LINC Tasmania's web-based document archive called STORS (Stable Tasmanian Open Repository Service). STORS is an open internet archive for electronic material created and published in Tasmania, and available to the community at large. It allows publishers to place and retain electronic publications in a reliable and managed central location that also satisfies their legal deposit obligations.
LINC Tasmania also selectively preserves World Wide Web sites which are created in Tasmania. These web sites are available on Our Digital Island.
If you have items to be deposited, you can take them to any LINC Tasmania branch and hand them to a staff member, making sure that they are clearly identified as "legal deposit" material. Alternatively, you can mail them to:
You should provide information about the name and address of the publisher, the retail price and a source from which we can obtain additional copies if the work isn't available commercially.
Details of legal deposit in Australia are available from the National Library of Australia website.
