Since 2018, the “Regional Access Service” has been offering local access to our archive of daily and weekly e-papers, thus making it easier for publishers and regional legal deposit libraries to fulfil the deposit obligation for e-papers in the respective state.

In order to participate in the “Regional Access Service”, two legal conditions must be met:

1. Trilateral agreements must be concluded between the publisher obliged to make the deposit, the regional library obliged to accept deposits and the German National Library
2. Bilateral cooperative agreements must be concluded between the German National Library and the individual regional library

The publishers deposit copies with the German National Library only and not with one or more regional legal deposit libraries. The regional legal deposit libraries fulfil their legal collection, access and long-term archiving obligations by guaranteeing access to the archived daily e-papers through the German National Library.

Advantages for publishers:

• Deposit obligation fulfilled by making one deposit with the German National Library instead of several deposits to various legal deposit libraries

Advantages for legal deposit libraries:

• Data maintenance, archiving and access taken over by the German National Library

• Central administration of access authorisations:

  • Which title is enabled for which libraries?
  • During which period can the library access the publication?
  • How many times can the same edition be accessed in parallel?

For each of the 777 titles currently enabled, we guarantee that each library will always only be able to access the titles and daily issues for which it has concluded an agreement with the publisher.

The “Regional Access Service” grew out of the “Regional Window” collaboration between the German National Library and the Regional Library Working Group (Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Regionalbibliotheken).

The holdings of the participating regional libraries can be searched here. The individual daily issues can only be accessed in the reading rooms of the participating libraries.

Further information

Sarah Eimer: Die E-Paper-Kooperation - Ein Modell für die Zukunft. In: Dialog mit Bibliotheken 2018/2, S. 8ff (only available in German)