Under s 201 of the Copyright Act 1968, Australian publishers of ‘library material’ are required to deposit copies of that material with the National Library of Australia (NLA). The scheme only applies to material that is published in Australia. ‘Library material’ is defined broadly and includes all paper-based publications, books, pamphlets, sheet music, and periodicals (s201(5)). Non-compliance with the requirement to deposit set out in s 201(1) constitutes an offence attracting a $100 penalty.

Publishers are not entitled to payment or compensation for depositing items as required by the scheme.

The scheme does not currently apply to films, sound recordings or other materials in an electronic form such as web material or books published electronically but submissions have been invited by 11 January 2008 on a discussion paper which considers extending the scheme to include audiovisual and electronic material.  (for discussion see Law Font).

The review of the legal deposit scheme raises issues for arts policy,
our heritage and national collections policy, information technology policy and
copyright law policy.