In 1994 the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (KB) decided to include electronic publications in its deposit collection. This was considered as a logical extension of the deposit for printed publications already in place. In December 2002, after a few years of experimenting, the current e-Depot was delivered, with the IBM Digital Information and Archiving System (DIAS) as its technical 'heart'. The e-Depot is now fully operational and imbedded in the KB organisation. The emergence of the electronic journal creates new challenges to the traditional deposit model. Because of the involvement of international publishers of Dutch origin, the e-Depot has had an international dimension right from the start. In 2002 the KB signed an historic electronic archiving agreement with Elsevier Science, which covered the entire set of Elsevier journals. This arrangement turned the KB into the first official digital archive in the world for journals published by international scientific publishers. A year later the KB concluded a similar agreement with Kluwer Academic Publishers. Other publishers followed, also from outside the Netherlands: Biomed Central, Blackwell, Oxford University Press, Taylor and Francis, Sage, Springer and Brill Academic Publishers. On the basis of these agreements the e-Depot will eventually hold 9 million articles. The annual increase in the number of articles from these publishers will be around 400,000. Publishers are required to deposit their publications free of charge. Access is restricted: only on-site, for any registered user of the KB. Remote access is only offered with permission of the publisher. On-site retrieval, access, printing, downloading is for private use only, systematic reproduction is not allowed. Documents are available for interlibrary document supply within the Netherlands. The archive serves as a guarantee to all licensees worldwide. In case of calamities or in case the publisher does not meet his obligations, the KB safeguards the access that licensees have paid for. Primarily, long-term ...