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. Additionally, UK theses normally accessed through the EThOS system cannot be viewed.
UPDATE (2024-02-27): The British Library continues to work with the Library of Trinity College Dublin and the four UK legal deposit libraries to review and ‘build back better’ the access infrastructure for the e-books, e-journals, archived websites, and other digital publications. It is working closely with the Library and all of these partners to enable access to this content, in some form, by the middle of the year (2024). For the latest up-to-date information on the steps towards recovery, see the British Library’s blog.
Electronic Legal Deposit items are materials that the Library has received under Legal Deposit Legislation. This legislation entitles the Library to a copy of every item published in the UK.
This material is not the same as commercially available digital material. Access is subject to a number of important restrictions:
UK eLD items can be identified in Stella Search as follows: