ABSTRACT
Legal deposit privileges for the Bibliotheque Royale de Belgique in Brussels began in 1594 and this existed in various forms until 1886. The publisher is obliged to deposit one copy of every publication published in Belgium with the Bibliotheque Royale, and the author who is a Belgian citizen and domiciled in Belgium, must deposit those publications published outside Belgium. The materials required are publications of all kinds reproduced by means of printing, or by any other graphic process. The deposit is for each book and brochure. The Belgian law’s weaknesses are that it omits audio-visual material and that periodicals are not deposited automatically, thus putting the responsibility on the Bibliothèque Royale for ensuring that the periodical collection is complete, rather than on the publisher.
