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The website and online systems of the British Library are suffering from a major outage after being hit by a cyber attack.
The British Library is one of the largest in the world, containing over 150 million items, 13.5 million of which are printed books.
The outage is affecting access to the library’s public website, as well as online services such as catalogues and digital collections at its locations in Yorkshire and London.
“The British Library is experiencing a major technology outage, as a result of a cyber incident,” said the British Library in a statement posted to X (formerly Twitter).
“This is affecting online systems and services, our website, and onsite services including our reading rooms.”
We’re experiencing a major technology outage as a result of a cyber incident. This is affecting our website, online systems and services, and some onsite services including public Wi-Fi. We’re currently investigating the incident with @NCSC and other specialists.
— British Library (@britishlibrary) October 31, 2023
The Library’s… pic.twitter.com/0GbsCnULXX
Issues with The British Library’s systems were first detected when the organisation said its public Wi-Fi was down and it was suffering from technical issues. While the Wi-Fi quickly returned to normal, it said it expected the outage to occur for a number of days.
We are still experiencing technology issues and we expect this to continue for the next few days.
— British Library (@britishlibrary) October 28, 2023
Our website and a number of on site services remain down. Our Reading Rooms will be closed as usual on Sunday and will reopen for personal study on Monday, but collection items and… pic.twitter.com/ZBhCOB7Cmg
With the outage still ongoing, the library has said that it has launched an investigation into the incident, engaging the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) and additional cyber specialists.
“We are investigating the incident with the support of the NCSC and cyber security specialists,” it added.
At this stage, the physical locations of the British Library remain open, with services such as reading rooms for personal study still available.
Additionally, those who have placed collection item orders on or before 26 October will still be able to collect them. However, manual collection item ordering is very limited and only applies to stored items at St Pancras in London.
Furthermore, the Fantasy: Realms of Imagination exhibition is still running, with tickets still valid. Tickets are also still for sale but only onsite with cash.
The British Library has said that it will update its social media with additional information as it becomes available.
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