Business case for PDF ready print

Owned by Bill Branan
Jun 16, 2017
2 min read

Introduction

Legal deposit is a legal requirement that a producer (of books, of music, of movies, of sheet music, of games etc.) submit copies of their publications to a repository.

In Denmark legal deposit has been required since 1697 and is handled by The Royal Library,  The State and University Library and Danish Film Institute. Two copies must be supplied.

Today publications are (digital and/or physical) books, periodicals, film, internet materials, radio- and television broadcasts, maps, sheet music etc... For more information about legal posit in Denmark see this website

The business case

This business case describes only the legal deposit of books.

The publisher must submit two copies of each Danish-made book to the Royal Library and the State Library, which each hold a copy of the book.

The Royal Library is responsible for archival of their copy and the copy is only available at the reading toom while the copy at The State Library is available for ordinary lending.

Today it's a major task for the libraries to digitize the physical delivered materials such as printed books to ease the access to the physical delivered materials. Note that due to different set of restrictions only delivered materials more than 100 years old are digitazed.

The digitization process is very time consuming and costly. The digitization process consists of the scanning of each page of the book, OCR of the text on each page so you in the end are able to create a digital book. In most cases a searchable PDF for easy dissemination.

Like other industries, the graphical industry has been digitized, too. So today the workflow from the writer to the printer is a high quality digital workflow producing print ready digital files such as, PDF's.

So it s obvious that a legal deposit of the digital materials ready for printing instead of the physical printed materials will shortcut a lot of costly processes in the future.

The following issues must be solved to fullfill the business case:

  • What digital file in the graphical process can substitute the digitized physical book?
  • Ensure you have all information about the digital file for long-term preservation purpose.
  • Which tools can help you to charactirize the delivered digital materials.