About e-Helvetica Deposit
e-Helvetica Deposit is the platform for publishers to deposit individual digital publications with the Swiss National Library.
For the National Library, digital publications are content that has been created digitally (born-digital) and published on the Internet. They may exist independently or in conjunction with other forms of publication.
What electronic publications can you deposit?
You can deposit books and journals with a link to Switzerland, so-called Helvetica. These are:
- published in Switzerland, or
- published abroad and relate to Switzerland or Swiss citizens or persons residing in Switzerland, or
- published abroad and created by, in collaboration with, or published by Swiss authors or organizations.
Only books and journals published on the Internet and available in PDF or EPUB format are permitted (only deliver one format).
Books must have a minimum of six pages, journals an average of six pages per issue. The maximum permitted file size is 1 GB.
What electronic publications you cannot deposit?
- Publications published abroad and that have no link to Switzerland or where less than one-third of the content relates to Switzerland.
- Publications for which there is no mention of publication on the Internet.
- Individual chapters of books or individual articles from journals.
- Publications in other formats than PDF and EPUB, e.g. Kindle
- Publications mainly comprising advertising (editorial content is less than a third).
- Pictures, photographs
- Digital reproductions
- Films
- Maps
- Musical notes, scores, music files
- Websites
Register as publisher
Before you can deposit digital publications, you have to register as a publisher (only once). You can register by clicking Register as publisher. Your data will be transmitted to the Swiss National Library. You will be informed by email if your registration is accepted. You can change at any time your contact data or password in the Account menu.
Submit a book
Once you have registered as a publisher, you can log in, submit and upload your book by filling the form Submit a book. You must complete one form per digital book. Once the form is submitted, you cannot make any changes. Your data is then transmitted to the Swiss National Library.
You can stop the registration process at any time and resume later: your book is saved for 90 days in the menu Books under the menu Books temporarily saved. You can continue registration process or delete the book saved temporarily. Under Books submitted is a list of all the books you've already submitted.
We will confirm by e-mail that your book, including metadata, has arrived at the Swiss National Library and the delivery process is thus completed. Your book will be archived and the metadata will be integrated into the catalog.
We reserve the right to refuse a book if it does not meet the collection criteria. In this case, we will inform you by e-mail.
Submit a journal
Once you have registered as a publisher, you can log in and register your journal title in the menu Journals by filling the form Submit a title. To do so, you must enter the details of the journal in the form. The Swiss National Library will then establish whether the journal is eligible for collection. We reserve the right to refuse a journal if it does not meet the collection criteria. We also review the journal details and make changes and additions to the metadata where necessary. We then approve the title so its issues can be deposited. You will be informed accordingly by e-mail.
You may now upload individual issues of your journal to e-Helvetica Deposit via Submit an issue. You must also include the numbering for each deposited edition. It is possible to submit one issue or several issues in succession.
We would like to request that you regularly deposit every issue of your journal. This will allow us to archive the full collection of your publication for future generations.
If there is any change in the information of the journal, if the title of your journal changes or your journal is no longer published, please report this to us by e-mail at deposit.e-helvetica@nb.admin.ch.
Further information
You will find more detailed information in the help texts in the forms or in the menu Information in the FAQ.
Should you have any more questions, please contact deposit.e-helvetica@nb.admin.ch.