These trusted parties can be addressed by users when strict conditions are met. The e-Depot is essentially a “dark archive”. Access to content is restricted and occurs only under specific conditions where a publication (or set of publications) has become unavailable from the publisher. The actions upon which content becomes available are called “trigger events”.

There are four trigger events:
1. a publisher ceases operations
2. a publisher ceases to publish and offer a title
3. a publisher no longer offers back issues
4. upon catastrophic and sustained failure of a publisher’s delivery platform

Participation libraries will be provided with a campus wide access (or in the public domain) to archived content when a trigger event occurs.

In addition to trigger events, both publishers and libraries have recognized that in some cases, after termination of a license to an electronic resource, a library will grant continuous access to the content it had previously paid for within the license. This is called post-cancellation access. There are different ways for a publisher to provide libraries with post-cancellation access:
– continued online access to archival copies of the licensed material on the publisher’s server
– supplying archival copies of the licensed material to the library
– granting access to the licensed material via an e-journal archiving solution
– In many cases publishers designate an archiving solution as a mechanism for post-cancellation access.

In the forthcoming years, the KB will further expand the content in the international e-Depot. It already has agreements with twelve of the top 70 publishers in the world and shall endeavour to conclude agreements with the remaining companies in this group. With this the e-Depot has the ambition to hold about 80% of the scholarly literature.