Deposit digital publications
Canadian publishers and producers are to submit final versions of these digital publications:
- monographs (books, audiobooks, maps, and sheet music)
- serials (magazines, journals, newsletters, annual reports, newspapers)
Contact us if you have ONIX for Books data and would like to set up automated deliveries of your publications.
On this page
Eligible files
Accepted formats
We accept these file types up to 4 GB:
- audiobook (AAC, MP3, and WAV)
- text (EPUB and PDF)
- image (JPEG, JPG, PNG, TIF and TIFF)
- spreadsheet (XLS and XLSX)
- compressed (ZIP)
Formats not accepted
- documents (DOC, DOCX)
- web files (HTML, XML, PHP, ASP, PDF flipbooks)
- proprietary formats (MOBI, Kindle, or iBook)
- files with digital rights management (DRM) software
Deposit publications
1. Create an account
First-time users must create an account. The information you provide is saved to your profile.
- On the login screen, select Create account
- Enter your email address and the digits you see in the image, then click Next
- You will get an email with 2 options to verify your email address
- On the Complete registration screen, create a password and enter your name, organization and phone number
- You will be returned to the login screen
- Enter your email address (as your username) and password
2. Choose conditions of access
Decide on the conditions under which the public may view your files:
- Open access
- Anyone may view and download the files from the Library and Archives Canada (LAC) website
- Restricted access
-
The public may only view the files onsite at LAC using computers that cannot print, download or transfer files
3. Submit items
You may submit publications one title at a time, or in bulk using a spreadsheet that we provide.
Submit a single monograph
Use these instructions to submit final versions of a title, which may be in multiple formats (such as PDF and EPUB) or in multiple files (such as an audiobook). This form is the easiest way to submit one or several monographs. You must already have an account (see Create an account).
Information we collect from you may be made publicly available (see Use of personal information).
- Under Forms select Legal deposit of a digital monograph
- Complete the form
- Click Submit
Submit monographs in bulk
Use these instructions to submit final versions of 10 to 50 titles of the same type at a time (such as all books or all audiobooks). This method requires you to be familiar with spreadsheets (using Microsoft Excel, Google Sheets, Apple Numbers, or OpenOffice Calc). You must already have an account (see Create an account).
- Under Forms > Available forms select Legal deposit of digital monographs > Bulk submission
- Click on Download BAC-LAC metadata spreadsheet to save the spreadsheet to your computer
- Rename the spreadsheet to begin with "BAC-LAC" for validation purposes (such as "BAC-LAC-metadata.xlsx" or "bac-lac2.xlsx")
- Open the spreadsheet and provide these details for each title: filename title, publisher, place of publication, year of publication, language
- When you have completed the spreadsheet, save it, complete the rest of the form, and add the spreadsheet with your publication files at step 4 on the form
- Click Submit
- To deposit another type of material, start a new form and new spreadsheet
Submit serials
Use these instructions to submit complete issues of serial publications (magazines, journals, annual reports, newsletters, etc). You must already have an account (see Create an account).
- Under Forms > Available forms select Legal deposit of digital serials
- Complete the form with the serial title, ISSN (if applicable), and your desired public access level
- Upload up to ten (10) issues. In the “Issue number” field, add a label for each issue indicating the date or numbering for the issue, for example: Volume 1 (June 2025)
- Click Submit
Serial publishers who distribute new issues through an automated mailing list can send their ongoing submissions to controledesperiodiques-serialscontrol@bac-lac.gc.ca.
4. After you deposit
- You will receive an email confirmation with a list of your submitted files
- We will add a record describing the publication to our catalogue Aurora
- We will archive the files in our digital repository