User-centred collecting for emerging formats

Since 2013, the UK legal deposit libraries have worked collaboratively to develop systems to manage born-digital publications, including a more experimental approach to content management for emerging formats. Within the content management lifecycle, access was identified as a key challenge. This paper provides an overview of the work conducted at legal deposit libraries to better understand access requirements for emerging formats, from a user's perspective and with a focus on web-based interactive narratives. It includes background information on UK non-print legal deposit and the characteristics that distinguish emerging formats from other collection items. It explores the findings from different workshops discussing user's needs and expectations when accessing born-digital collections in a library environment. It also considers how existing tools and methodologies, such as web archiving, can be adapted and built to support the collection of emerging formats. Finally, it delves into different research projects conducted at the British Library around archiving and performing quality assurance for interactive narratives, collecting contextual information, and lessons learnt from exhibiting born-digital content in a physical space.