British Library web site archiving project still stymied by 'copyright issues'

Archiving of some sites by British Library on hold until legislation gets green light

British Library full UK web site archiving stuck until legislation changes

The British Library project to archive thousands of UK web sites is on hold as legislation giving the libraries the green light is still being formed.

Currently the library is not allowed to 'snapshot' certain sites, owing to the threat of legal action by web site owners.

The 2003 Legal Deposit Libraries Act needs to be extended to cover freely available UK web sites.

Speaking at the launch event for its Growing Knowledge – the Evolution of Research exhibition, British Library director of e-strategy and information systems Richard Boulderstone said: "once this legislation goes through, we'll be able to snapshot web sites without infringing copyright."

The six UK legal deposit libraries are the Bodleian Libraries of University of Oxford, the British Library, the Cambridge University Library, the National Library of Scotland and the National Library of Wales.