ABSTRACT
The current legal deposit law in Malta is the Public Libraries Ordinance as amended in 1983. The first law dealing with legal deposit in Malta was issued in 1888. The Ordinance states that the author is the person responsible for depositing the ‘publications printed and published in Malta’. The law seems to omit Maltese works printed and/or published abroad, and works written by authors either living abroad or deceased and published in Malta. The printer as defined in the Press Act has to send a quarterly list of all the items he has printed to the National Library of Malta (Bibljoteka Nazzjonali) and the Gozo Public Library. A very interesting provision of this Ordinance is that works sent to the two libraries in accordance with the Ordinance can be sent post-free. There is no mention of the duties of the depository libraries in retaining the material sent to them on legal deposit, nor about making them available to the public.
