Titill:
Effects of legal changes and electronic publishing on the access to GL in Iceland
Höfundur:
Stefanía Júlíusdóttir
Tilvísun:
Stefanía Júlíusdóttir. 2014. „Effects of legal changes and electronic publishing on the access to GL in Iceland.“ International journal on grey literature 10 (3): 151-162.
Abstract:
This article describes briefly legal stipulations on collection building and public access to printed matter (grey literature as well as market publications) in Iceland since a printing press was brought to the country around 1530 (Sigurdsson, 1971). The importance of public access to knowledge and information in a democratic society is argued for. The findings of a study (2002) on the changes in proportions of grey versus white literature from 1944 to 2001 are described. They indicated greatly increase output of written knowledge in Iceland during the latter half of the 20th century, in particular increases in GL, international peer reviewed journal articles, and patent applications. Moreover a suspicion arose that GL might increasingly have been produced in-house, and published electronically as the 20th century drew to a close. If so that would have been a problem because publications produced in-house were often not delivered on legal deposit, due to ignorance of their producers of the law. The e-medium was, furthermore, not covered by the Legal Deposit Act no. 43/1977 in force until the 1st of January 2003 and therefore access, both bibliographic and to the publications themselves, was difficult or even missing. The findings of the follow-up study in 2012 indicated that contrary to expectations technological developments that facilitated in-house production of GL and e-publishing towards the end of the 20th century and at the beginning of the 21st century had made GL harder to access. Amendments to the Legal Deposit Act no. 20/2002 were necessary to maintain the kind of public access stipulated in previous legal acts in Iceland and enjoyed by the Icelandic public during the period of print on paper.
