The National Library of Norway – policies and services

Abstract

The operation of National Library of Norway (NLN) is governed by the Legal Deposit Act of 1989, latest amendment in 2015. By this law, all documents of any type made publicly available in Norway, must be provided to the National Library for registration, preservation and dissemination. According to an added regulation in 2018, NLN may also require the digital version of printed documents, as well as core metadata. Another important policy document is issued by The Ministry of Culture and The Ministry of Education and Research, outlining a library strategy for the period 2020-2023. While including all types of libraries, the strategy has a strong focus on NLN as a driving force and service provider for the rest of the Norwegian library sector, in mandating NLN to support other libraries in a number of ways, - financially through funding development projects, structurally by way of providing crucial infrastructure and developmentally by conducting our own innovation activities.The national bibliography forms the backbone for many of the infrastructure services, like the future Metadata Well, constituting one single authorized source of metadata for Norwegian libraries, various authority files, as well as several thematic bibliographies. It also lies at the heart of enabling end users to access the vast collections of digitized material, even much of the IPR-restricted material, obtained through deals with rightsholder associations.