Legal Deposit Laws of Iran: Content Analysis of Legal Deposit Documents Using IFLA Recommended Legal Deposit Framework

According to previous studies, Iranian publishers generally do not comply with national legal deposit laws and regulations due to the shortcomings in such laws and regulations. The purpose of this research is to explore the strengths and weaknesses of the mentioned laws and make some recommendation for improvements.

20 Iranian legal deposit documents issued between 1905 and 2016 were reviewed using qualitative content analysis method. They were categorized and coded based on IFLA “Legal Deposit Framework” in MAXQDA software. To ensure the validity of the analysis two faculty members and two students aware of the subject reviewed and endorsed the codes. To rate reliability, the percentage of agreement was calculated.

Legal deposit rules and procedures in Iran are spelled out in several laws, regulations, ratified bills, and circulars. However, the term “legal deposit” has appeared only in one document while “Comprehensiveness” and “depository” exist in all the documents reviewed. The elements of “origin of the publication”, “depositor”, and “number of copies” to deposit are mentioned in 19. National Library and Archives of Iran is the depository in 13, and 2 copies of each publication as the minimum number to be deposited is mentioned in 16. The element “time of deposit” has appeared by the words like “immediately” or “after binding” in 9 documents. That leaves the actual time of deposit ambiguous. Free deposit has been mentioned in only 4 documents. Music scores, Iconographic material, online publication, and audio-visual material are not mentioned at all. Also, depositing appropriate accompanying material of online and offline electronic publication (e.g., software) is not addressed in the document relating deposit of electronic publications. No penalty for non-compliance is predicted in 19 documents studied.

The mere existence of legal documents for the deposit of publications shows that cultural custodians and librarians have been aware of the importance of collecting national publications. Now, there is a need to have a law for online publications too. Also, according to “Legal Deposit Framework” of IFLA, a law for legal deposit should include a penalty structure for non-compliance; something which is missed in the 19 documents reviewed. In addition, none have addressed access and copy right condition for deposited material. Since the main goal of legal deposit is to preserve national and cultural heritage of the nation and make them accessible now and in the future, in addition to ascertain the place of preservation and protective facilities and security, the law must address the issue of making copy from the deposited materials.