The British Library is open again, and quietly furious
After the cyberattack, a slow-motion comeback that has reshaped the institution.
Eighteen months after the ransomware attack that took most of its catalogue offline, the British Library is once again issuing reader passes. Not all systems have returned. The temper of the place has, unmistakably, changed.
Staff are protective in a way they were not before. The reading rooms feel quieter, more focused, less of a tourist attraction. The card catalogue — restored, by hand, by a small army of librarians — is now treated with a reverence it had not enjoyed since the 1980s.
There is a lesson in this for every public institution that has digitised in haste. Some redundancy is not waste. It is dignity.
Further Reading
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