The French National Library and legal deposit: two centuries of publications

The French national bibliography was founded in 1811. It has always been closely connected with the legal deposit system, whose three principal objectives over the last two centuries have been to enrich national collections, protect author’s rights, and monitor – sometimes even censor – publications. The national bibliography has undergone many changes of form over the past two hundred years, but its role has always been the same: to record the nation’s entire output of publications. The bibliography is constantly evolving and implementing new tools to adapt to recent developments, enabling it to fulfil its original remit in the modern world.
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