The Law on Libraries (1994) and the Law on Statutory Deposit of Documents (1994), the latter also concerned with audiovisual products, were adopted in times of severe crisis in cultural institutions and a weakness of legal enforcements. Their main task was to provide for public access and preservation of public libraries as socially important institutions. However, the latter was ignored for almost a decade by some publishers; all these resulted in gaps in national library collections of that time.
An updated version of the is under elaboration. Its most important novellas are to be concerned with Internet resources preservation and e-libraries. The restrictions in the copyright legislation introduced in 2008 by the Fourth Part of the Civil Code stated the immunity of literary works and jeopardised the issues of producing copies of documents for readers and use of digitalised books. In 2009, the novellas of the Law on Libraries introduced the notions of the “library collection”, “national library collection”, and “book monument” that filled in the blind spots in the legal protection of this type of heritage. The priority of preservation over access for the “book monument” was stated.
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