Examining the Coverage of a National Deposit Library: A Case Study in the Netherlands

Generally, the purpose of deposit libraries is to gather all publications as part of the national cultural heritage and preserve them for future generations. A study was undertaken to determine the coverage of the deposit collection of the National Library of the Netherlands. Coverage amounted to circa 95% for books with an ISBN and circa 70% for books without an ISBN. In both cases, the method of list checking was applied. However, definitive statements cannot be made for three reasons: uncertainties about the appropriateness of the checklists, difficulties in assessing the relevance of missing titles and the possibility that coverage increases over time due to late arrival of publications. Failure analysis showed that lacunae were caused by occasional failures from publishers rather than a structural lack of cooperation. Increasing coverage therefore would require list checking at a large scale on a yearly basis. Procedures are described to reduce the workload on undertaking such a regular review. At present, no comparable studies were identified in the published literature. The authors hope that this paper will stimulate other countries to examine coverage of the collection of their Deposit Libraries and to publish the results of any studies that have been done. The methodology followed in this study may be helpful to other countries wishing to perform similar studies.