Update June 11th, 2024: The disruption of the Library’s access to publications normally available via UK Electronic Legal Deposit (on our reading room PCs and borrowable Library laptops) is ongoing, following the cyberattack on the British Library at the end of October 2023. Additionally, UK theses normally accessed through the EThOS system cannot be viewed.
The British Library continues to work with the Library of Trinity College Dublin and the four other UK legal deposit libraries to restore access to UK electronic legal deposit materials that were deposited prior to the cyber-attack and we now expect this to be available for the new academic year (2024-25). The Library will update you on specific dates nearer the time. For the latest up-to-date information on the steps towards recovery, see the British Library’s blog.
A cyber-attack on the British Library (BL) means that our "electronic Legal Deposit (UK)" items, which are normally available on our reading room PCs and borrowable Library laptops, are currently unavailable.
The outage has been affecting the BL website, online systems and services, and includes electronic Legal Deposit since late 2023.
The British Library - image by Roger Davies
Regularly check the British Library blog and their X feed @britishlibrary for updates on the current status of their services. You can contact the BL via X or emailing customer@bl.uk (be prepared for delay to responses).
Open Textbook Library - Open Textbook Library (umn.edu)
HathiTrust Digital Library – Millions of books online
CORE – Aggregating the world’s open access research papers
Directory of Open Access Journals – DOAJ
EBSCO Open Dissertations | EBSCO
LibreCommons | Catalog (libretexts.org)
Open Access books on JSTOR - About JSTOR
About this Collection | World Digital Library | Digital Collections | Library of Congress (loc.gov)
lingbuzz - archive of linguistics articles (auf.net)
Cochrane Reviews | Cochrane Library
Teaching Commons | Open Educational Resources
Resource Search - National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education
Lumen's Catalog Page | Pressbooks (lumenlearning.com)
lingbuzz - archive of linguistics articles (auf.net)
BEK | Elektroničke knjige (elektronickeknjige.com)
Početna stranica - Portal znanja (lzmk.hr)
Hrčak portal hrvatskih znanstvenih i stručnih časopisa - Hrčak (srce.hr)
Useful Polish Links - Russian & Slavonic Studies - Trinity College Dublin (tcd.ie)
Advanced Business Law and the Legal Environment.
European Citizenship after Brexit.
Foundations of Business Law and Legal Environment.
Introduction to Criminal Investigation.
Introduction to Case Notes for New Social Workers.
Issues Around Aligning Theory, Research and Practice in Social Work Education.
Open Textbooks for Social Work (Go to “Education” and then “Adopt an Open Textbook” to access).
Research Methods for the Social Sciences (Lumen).
Scientific Inquiry in Social Work.
Situating Children of Migrants across Borders and Origins.
Social Science Research: Principles, Methods, and Practices.
Social Science Research: Principles, Methods and Practices (Revised Edition).
Statistics for the Social Sciences (Lumen).
Introduction to Sociology: 2nd Canadian Edition.
Introduction to Sociology (Course)
Abnormal Psychology Course (OER Commons).
Introduction to Community Psychology.
Anatomy and Physiology 2e - 2e - Open Textbook Library (umn.edu)
Human Anatomy and Physiology Preparatory Course - Open Textbook Library (umn.edu)
The Head and Neck Bones: Anatomy and 3D Illustrations (innerbody.com)
Advanced Anatomy Head and Neck.
Dentistry Environment Essentials.
Histology and Embryology for Dental Hygiene.
Interface Oral Health Science 2016.
Introduction to Dental Terminology.
Oral Radiographic Differential Diagnosis.
Restorative Mastery for the Dental Hygienist.
Directory of Open Access Books
National Library of Medicine Bookshelf
Fast Facts | Karger Publishers
Building a Medical Terminology Foundation – Simple Book Publishing (pressbooks.pub)
B.C. Open Collection | BCcampus
Undergraduate Diagnostic Imaging Fundamentals - Open Textbook Library (umn.edu)
Aging Well: Solutions to the Most Pressing Global Challenges of Aging | SpringerLink
Creative Clinical Teaching in the Health Professions (Athabasca University Press) (bccampus.ca)
Field Trials of Health Interventions, 3rd edition (oapen.org)
Integrated Behavioral Health in Primary Care: Your Patients Are Waiting | SpringerLink
Introduction to Communication in Nursing – Open Textbook (torontomu.ca)
A Primer of Evolution (michitobler.github.io)
Cell and Molecular Biology: What We Know & How We Found Out - 5e - Open Textbook Library (umn.edu)
Biology - 2e - Open Textbook Library (umn.edu)
Cardiovascular Pathophysiology for Pre-Clinical Students – Simple Book Publishing (vt.edu)
Concepts of Biology - Open Textbook Library (umn.edu)
Find Open Textbooks – BCcampus OpenEd Resources
Environmental Biology – Simple Book Publishing (pressbooks.pub)
Human Biology - Open Textbook Library (umn.edu)
Find Open Textbooks – BCcampus OpenEd Resources
Principles of Biology – Simple Book Publishing (pressbooks.pub)
Chemistry: Atoms First 2e (OpenStax).
Chemistry (Open Textbook Library).
CLUE: Chemistry, Life, the Universe and Everything.
OCLUE: Organic Chemistry, Life, the Universe & Everything.
The Adventure of Physics – Vol. I: Fall, Flow, and Heat.
Our readers can obviously double-check Stella Search for alternative copies, but may also want to consider HathiTrust or Archive.org for older and out-of-copyright material.
If you are looking for a book and no print or other e-book version is available, contact your Subject Librarian for assistance with sourcing alternative content options; we may be able to purchase an e-book copy, for example, or show you how to request an Inter-Library Loan.
If you are looking for a specific article and we don't seem to have the journal via a subscription, again, contact your Subject Librarian for help.
Although the British Library catalogue is not available, you can still check for British Library published material in Library Hub Discover. This resource is a database of 204 UK and Irish academic, national & specialist library catalogues. If you want to easily find a copy in another library in the UK or Ireland, then make friends with Library Hub Discover!
The UK Web Archive blog remains publicly available and is a useful source of information about the archive. Although the UK Web Archive is not currently available, the information pages have been preserved by the Internet Archive.
"Memento Time Travel" refers to a concept and technology allowing users to view archived websites in openly accessible web archives that have implemented the Memento protocol, a standardized approach for querying different web archives to access past versions of web resources. It links to web archives including the Internet Archive, Archive-It, UK Web Archive, archive.today, GitHub and others. The TimeTravel service only displays links of Mementos to publicly accessible web archives, it does not own or store the content.
Portuguese Web Archive is an openly accessible web archive developed by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT). It aims to preserve and provide access to the Portuguese web domain and its contents.
UK Government Web Archive is an openly accessible archive which preserves and makes available UK central government information published on the web. The Web Archive includes videos, tweets, images and websites dating from 1996 to the present day.
UK Parliament Web Archive is an openly accessible web archive covering parliamentary websites and social media, from 2009 to present day.
National Records of Scotland Web Archive is an openly accessible web archive. Browse and search websites related to Scotland’s people and history.
The Internet Archive is a nonprofit digital library which was founded in San Francisco in 1996. It is the largest and most comprehensive web archive in the world, known for its extensive global collection of archived web pages through its Wayback Machine. While its coverage of the Web is much broader than nationally-focused web archives, it may not have archived websites in as much depth as web archives with a more specific focus.
The BL says: ‘As our systems remain unavailable, you won’t be able to change the password you have used to access British Library services. However, if you use the same password to login to other, non-British Library services we recommend that you change it.’
Many thanks to our colleagues at the Bodleian Library who originally created much of the above guidance.