A DIGITAL "black hole" is swallowing vital information about key events in Scottish history and modern life, the nation's library has warned.
The National Library of Scotland (NLS) wants to collect and store, with other legal deposit libraries in the UK, 10 million websites a year which document life in modern Britain.
The digital advances in communications in the last 20 years means that much information and news coverage, once solely the preserve of newspapers and books, appears online.
However, the library said yesterday "there is no current system for preserving this type of information and there is evidence some of it is disappearing forever".
The institution said the "black hole" means "valuable information about key aspects of Scottish life being lost forever".
The library says important web content relating to last year's Scottish Parliament elections, the debate around the 2005 Edinburgh congestion charging referendum, coverage of the 2011 London riots, the 2009 Parliamentary expenses scandal, and the 2005 London bombings have already been "lost".
It says it needs permission to copy websites as site creators have intellectual property rights over their pages – so although the library could go ahead and copy pages without permission, it could then be forced to take down the websites by their owners. At present, legal deposit libraries in the UK, including the NLS, are archiving several thousand websites a year. However, they aim is to archive 100% of the UK web which would amount to some 10 million websites a year
Legislation was passed by the Westminster Parliament in 2003 to give national libraries the legal right to collect and store electronic publications. However, it was not until earlier this year that the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) launched a further public consultation on a set of draft regulations for implementation in 2013, and the NLS is pained by the delays in officially implementing the laws.
Martyn Wade, chief executive and national librarian, said the UK Government has to act swiftly to stop the digital losses. He said: "We are now well behind many other countries in archiving the web.
"It is vital we get the powers we need to save the nation's digital memory for future generations.
"We hold millions of historic documents dating back centuries and it has been frustrating that we have had no ability to save electronic information from just a few years ago. Knowledge about our past is vital in shaping our future and action is needed to stop important electronic information disappearing down this digital black hole."
The library raised the issue in evidence to the Scottish Parliament on the NLS Bill which was passed earlier this month.
The Holyrood Education and Culture Committee also expressed its concern at the delay in its report on the Bill. It supported Culture Minister Fiona Hyslop in making representations to the DCMS and said it "looks forward to this issue being resolved as quickly as possible".
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