I’m delighted that a paper from the Digital Library Futures project has come out in the Journal of Documentation:

Gooding, P. , Terras, M. and Berube, L. (2021) Identifying the future direction of legal deposit in the United Kingdom: the Digital Library Futures approach. Journal of Documentation, (doi: 10.1108/JD-09-2020-0159)

Until this paper, there had been next to no research into how users are approaching and utilising the digital library collections now being amassed by our Legal Deposit (or colloquially known as “copyright libraries”) following the Legal Deposit Libraries (Non-Print Works) Regulations 2013, which enables and mandates them to collect digital copies of publications, as well as or instead of print. This paper addresses that gap by presenting key findings from the AHRC-funded Digital Library Futures project. Its purpose is to present a “user-centric” perspective on the potential future impact of the digital collections that are being created under electronic legal deposit regulations. Through our user study, we show that contemporary tensions between user behaviour and access protocols risk limiting the instrumental value of these digital library collections, which – although they have high perceived legacy value – are not being used in the way that they could, due to access and legal restrictions.

I’ve stuck the authors’ last copy up here, so you can read it if you can’t get beyond the paywall:

Gooding, P. , Terras, M. and Berube, L. (2021) Identifying the future direction of legal deposit in the United Kingdom: the Digital Library Futures approach (authors’ last copy, PDF).