ABSTRACT
The South African law concerning the legal deposit of publications was the Natal Newspaper Law of 1858. The law to affect all of South Africa was passed by the South African parliament in 1916 and took effect in 1917. The publisher is responsible for the depositing of one copy of every publication, free of charge, with each of the legal deposit libraries within 30 days of publishing. ‘Publication’ is defined in the Act as meaning ‘a printed book, newspaper, magazine, periodical, journal, pamphlet, brochure, sheet, card or portion thereof or any similar printed matter’. The stated aim of the Act to ‘build up a national collection of material that provides an image of the culture and scientific activities of the country’ and further ‘the preservation of all publications produced in the country in widely separated libraries can be regarded as strategically important’.
