HAPPY HERITAGE DAY!
Today we celebrate Heritage Day, when all South Africans across the spectrum are encouraged to celebrate their culture and the diversity of their beliefs and traditions, in the wider context of a nation that belongs to all its people.
We congratulate authors, musicians, filmmakers, multimedia producers, creators and publishers in South Africa who create, record and publish our documented cultural heritage. They play a crucial role in helping our country to record, build and expand our precious cultural heritage. Without their valued contribution and participation in legal deposit, libraries would not be able to collect, make accessible or preserve our documentary heritage for future generations. We commend the symbiotic and positive relationship that publishers/producers and legal deposit libraries enjoy in South Africa.
We thank them for complying with the Legal Deposit Act no. 54 of 1997, which was enacted to provide for the preservation of the national documentary heritage through legal deposit of published documents; to ensure the preservation and cataloguing of, and access to, published documents emanating from, or adapted for, South Africa; to provide for access to government information; to provide for a Legal Deposit Committee; and to provide for matters connected therewith.
We thank the outgoing Legal Deposit Committee which advised the Minister of Arts and Culture on legal deposit matters from July 2013-June 2016.
We thank the Legal Deposit Libraries and Official Publications Depositories for their sterling work in collecting, processing, making accessible and preserving published material, films, videos, multimedia and e-publications, which form part of our documented cultural heritage.
We welcome members of the new Legal Deposit Committee (1 July 2016 to 30 June 2019). The Committee held its inaugural meeting at the National Library of South Africa in Pretoria on 22 September 2016. See names, affiliations and contact details of the new LDC members at: http://libguides.wits.ac.za/LegalDeposit/LDC
For information, advice, queries and/or exemptions, please contact Mr Harry Nkadimeng, the Legal Deposit Coordinator – see his contact details at: http://libguides.wits.ac.za/LegalDeposit/Co-ordinator
For information on the Legal Deposit Act, how and when to deposit, the list of legal deposit libraries, contact details, etc., see: http://libguides.wits.ac.za/LegalDeposit