Legal deposit
If you publish anything in the UK and Ireland, you need to give one copy to the British Library. This system, called legal deposit, has existed in English law since 1662, and was updated in 2013 to include electronic publications.
Contact us
Email our print team legal-deposit-books@bl.uk
Email our electronic team ldo-electronic@bl.uk
Legal deposit applies to any publication distributed in the UK and Ireland, regardless of content, format or language.
Following a cyber-attack in October 2023 our legal deposit service is disrupted, but please continue to submit your print publications.
How to submit your print publications
Please send your print publications to:
Legal Deposit Office
The British Library
Boston Spa
Wetherby
West Yorkshire
LS23 7BY
Please do not wait for us to send a claims letter for your publications. We are currently unable to send claims automatically (please note that any claims from the Agency for Legal Deposit Libraries are separate from those you may receive from us).
Once we receive your publication, it is recorded and will be stored securely until our systems are restored. Whilst recovery work is well underway, we are not yet able to offer receipts for your publications or show updates in our catalogue.
Submitting electronic publications
We can usually accept electronic submissions in a number of ways. These services are currently disrupted due to the cyber-attack.
The publisher portal
We can't currently receive content via the publisher portal.
Please contact our Digital Processing team by emailing LDO-Electronic@bl.uk who can advise alternative deposit options and accept smaller files via email.
File transfer
We can't currently accept submissions via file transfer. If you normally deposit in bulk using this method, please retain your publications until we can reinstate the digital feeds.
We'll be in touch nearer the time to discuss individual requirements. Please contact our team at LDO-Electronic@bl.uk if you have any questions.
Portico
If you use Portico to deposit your e-journal content with us, we will liaise directly with them to receive your titles at the appropriate time.
Publishers based in Scotland
You can deposit your electronic publications via the National Library of Scotland. Find out more, including contact details.
Blogs and websites
If you publish a blog or website under a UK top-level domain name, such as .uk, .scot or .cymru, there's a good chance we're archiving it automatically.
If your blog or website is published under a different top-level domain name, such as .com, we may not know about it. You can let us know by contacting web-archivist@bl.uk. See more information on how we archive your web publications.
Digital mapping
If you are a publisher of digital map datasets you should continue to work with our curators and third party GDAS supplier.
More about legal deposit
Legal deposit aims to collect and preserve the literary, scientific and social heritage of the nation for future generations. It is intended to be comprehensive, including all types of publication from all the different people and organisations who publish in the UK and Ireland.
You may also be contacted by the Agency for Legal Deposit Libraries, which acts on behalf of the other five Legal Deposit Libraries for the UK and Ireland. They are:
- National Library of Scotland
- National Library of Wales
- Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford
- Cambridge University Library
- Library, Trinity College Dublin
For more information on legal deposit, and its benefits for Publishers, please visit Agency for Legal Deposit Library (ALDL) or contact us at legal-deposit-books@bl.uk.
Can users still access legal deposit content?
You can request print legal deposit material that was received before the cyber-attack at both our St Pancras and Boston Spa sites. Once our systems are restored, we will resume the work of cataloguing and shelving all publications received since October 2023, which will then be accessible to Readers.
We have now completed a full scan of our existing (pre-October 2023) electronic legal deposit collections of books and journal articles and have been able to confirm that they are intact and free of any malware that might have been left by the attackers. Members of the Legal Deposit Library network (the National Libraries of Wales and Scotland, the Bodleian Libraries, Cambridge University Library and the Library of Trinity College Dublin) are now working to put in place arrangements to provide access to this content via an interim platform.
As with print material, the content made available in this first phase will consist of e-journals and e-publications deposited pre-October 2023.