• Index of this issue

No. 98, August 2021

< The new Deposit Portal was launched in March 2021 after two years of planning and development. >

The National Library, Singapore is a memory institution under the National Library Board (NLB) and is mandated to preserve the documentary heritage of Singapore. Over 1.4 million Singapore publications were collected through the Legal Deposit function since the Book Registration Ordinance was enacted in 1887. The collection consists of mostly physical materials, with a growing volume of electronic materials collected in recent years.

Recognising that many publishing activities are increasingly taking place online, the National Library Board Act was updated in 2018 to include the mandatory submission of electronic publications under Legal Deposit and archiving of Singapore websites. Prior to the Act amendments when submission of electronic publications was voluntary, only physical publications were mandated for Legal Deposit.

The need for a system revamp

Launched in 2015, NLB's existing Deposit Web online system serves publishers who wish to register for International Standard Numbers (ISN), apply for Cataloguing-in-Publication (CIP) records and submit publication details to Legal Deposit. The website was not designed to receive and process electronic materials. As a result, significant manual staff intervention is required through offline workflows and processes.

Following the amendments to the NLB Act, enhancements to the system are needed to deal with the expected increase in the submission of electronic materials. A revamp is needed to simplify the process of depositing, support the depositing of electronic materials and introduce more self-service applications for publishers. The revamp will also improve staff efficiency through automated workflows and processes.

Planning the new enhanced portal

The library conducted focus group discussions with publishers to gather feedback and suggestions to revamp the portal. Staff were also engaged in business process re-engineering reviews to rethink and redesign workflow and processes to better support the NLB's role in collecting Singapore publications while being resource efficient.

The new Deposit Portal

The new Deposit Portal was launched in March 2021 after two years of planning and development. It now consists of a public-facing interface for publishers and a backend interface accessed by library staff to approve registrations and applications, as well as facilitate the receipt and processing of materials submitted to Legal Deposit for preservation and access. The key improvements to the revamped portal are outlined below:

< Publishers can use the Deposit Portal to apply for International Standard Numbers, Cataloguing in Publication and submit publications for Legal Deposit. >

International Standard Number Application

The International Standard Number Application module in the Deposit Portal allows publishers to apply for International Standard Numbers (ISN) singularly or in blocks of 10, 100 and 1,000 online. This self-service application reduces offline communication between publishers and staff and enhances productivity and accountability.

Publishers can also update their publishing details online for all applications. This will help staff identify and track published materials for Legal Deposit.

Cataloguing-in-Publication Application

The Deposit Portal covers the end-to-end process from application to approval of ISNs and the subsequent download of CIP records from the portal. This streamlined self-service model captures data promptly and accurately thereby reducing offline interactions between publishers and library staff. Data from the application forms submitted is automatically populated into the corresponding fields in the CIP data block. Once the data is validated and edited by staff, the CIP record is generated for immediate download by both publishers and staff. At the same time, the system creates and makes available the record in Machine-Readable Cataloguing (MARC) format, which is uploaded to the NLB's catalogue and the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) for sharing of bibliographic records. Rejected applications will also be handled automatically, thus improving accountability within the workflow.

Deposit Publications Function

The portal has also been enhanced to accept an increasing variety of electronic formats such as Portable Digital Format (PDF), electronic publication (EPUB) and multimedia files including MP3 and MP4. This is in line with the change in collection scope brought about by the amendments of the NLB Act. A new ingestion module is also integrated in the portal, allowing staff to review the submitted electronic publications and process them for preservation and access on NLB platforms more efficiently. This was previously a manual process of compilation and ingestion into NLB's centralised Content Management System before making them available onto NLB platforms.

To address publishers' concerns with the copyright and access of deposited materials with NLB, the portal allows publishers to select an option to embargo their submitted electronic publications. Publishers can also select if they would prefer for the materials to be accessed remotely or only within the library premises.

The portal is also equipped with a reminder system that will trigger automatic email reminders to publishers to deposit their publications based on the date of publication that was captured in their ISN applications. This function enhances tracking for Legal Deposit and frees staff up to focus on more value-added work.

Click here to read more about the services provided in the new Deposit Portal.

Moving forward

The team continues to engage with stakeholders to improve and enhance the functionalities and components of the portal. A new access platform that allows the display of various multimedia forms with appropriate digital rights management for electronic publications deposited with the library is currently in development.

Deposit Portal website: https://www.nlb.gov.sg/depositapp/