Print publications
Legal deposit aims to protect the cultural heritage of a country. In Belgium the legal deposit for publications is mandatory and the Royal Library acts as the legal repository (Dutch). All publications deposited in the Royal Library of Belgium are included in the Belgian bibliography. Thereby, they will obtain greater visibility on national and international level.
How to deposit your publication and obtain a deposit number?
After you have requested an ISBN, the university library attributes a deposit number to your publication. It is mandatory to state this number in your publication in order to identify the work and its publisher.
Please send two copies of your publication to the university library. Deliver your copies to the contact address mentioned on this page.
Digital publications
Depositing digital publications is still done on a voluntary basis for the time being. The law that also provides for the legal deposit for electronic publications is not yet in force. It has yet to be converted into a royal decree.
Pending the publication of the royal decree, the library will already start the voluntary deposit in PDF format. We will contact you for this after requesting an ISBN number.
The deposited publications are then accessible via the general catalog of the Royal Library of Belgium. If the author does not want the publication to be freely available, the library will not provide a PDF.