Library Technology Guides

Rebecca Lawrence appointed as new Chief Executive of the British Library. Rebecca Lawrence has been appointed as the new Chief Executive of the British Library and will take up the role from 2 January 2025. She succeeds Sir Roly Keating, who has led the Library since 2012. Rebecca has had a long and successful career in leadership roles across the public service and university sector. From 2019 to 2023 she was Chief Executive of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), where she led the organisation through the pandemic, implementing large scale innovation to improve performance and support digital transformation. Prior to leading the CPS, she was a founder and first CEO of the Mayor's Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC), serving as Director of Strategy and Resourcing from 2013 to 2016, and Chief Executive from 2016 to 2019. In these roles she became a recognised national leader of police technology and digital security innovation. [Full Announcement].

Sir Roly Keating to step down as Chief Executive of the British Library in April 2025. After 12 years as Chief Executive, Sir Roly Keating has announced that he will step down from the role in April next year. [Full Announcement].

Learning lessons from the cyber-attack. The British Library published a paper about the cyber-attack that took place last October. This is of especial importance for libraries and all those institutions who share our mission to collect and make accessible knowledge and culture in digital form, and preserve it for posterity. Though the motive of the attack on the British Library appears to have been purely monetary, it functioned as, effectively, an attack on access to knowledge. The paper is informed by our expert advisers and specialists, but is our own account, updated and adapted from our internal investigations into the incident. It gives a description and timeline of the attack, to the best of our current understanding, and its implications for the Library's operations, future infrastructure and risk assessment. [Full Announcement].

Arts Council England. A Single Digital Presence for libraries. Arts Council England announced a further £3.4 million investment in the Single Digital Presence platform. That is the concept behind the Single Digital Presence (SDP) for libraries, which, together with the British Library, we've been working on for quite some time now. As we enter a new phase in bringing this vision to life, we are announcing a further £3.4 million to be invested in its development. Through this investment, we'll be able to cover the costs of building the technical architecture needed to create the platform, including software development, live testing with a range of library authorities and establishing the technical protocols – all of which will enable as many web presences as possible to plug in to this national portal. [Full Announcement].

New research proposes five options for a digital presence for public libraries. A new report from the British Library, commissioned by Arts Council England and the Carnegie UK Trust, has set out five possible options for digital transformation for UK public libraries. The recommendations paper, Digital Transformations for UK public libraries: five approaches to a ‘Single Digital Presence’ , sets out what a national online platform (or “single digital presence”) for public libraries could look like, what it could be used for and how such an offering might fit in with existing digital library systems. [Full Announcement].

British Library partners with Impactstory for open access discovery. The British Library exists to provide access to the world’s knowledge for everyone, for research, inspiration and enjoyment. But what does this mean in a publishing environment where increasingly more and more scholarly work is being published open access? As funders, researchers and universities realise that research must reach beyond academia, more research is now made publicly accessible. However, access to information is only half the battle. Before we can all benefit from the accessibility of this research, we first need to find it. [Full Announcement].

British Library to develop shared open access repository services. The British Library, working with a group of cultural and memory organisations, is piloting a shared repository service for research content built on an open source platform. The repository aims to increase the visibility and impact of research outputs, making the knowledge generated by cultural institutions easier to explore and use for new research. The Library has appointed open access publisher Ubiquity Press to build the pilot repository. It will initially be populated with research outputs produced by the project’s partners, the British Museum, Tate, National Museums Scotland and MOLA (Museum of London Archaeology), as well as the British Library’s own open research content. [Full Announcement].

British Library to investigate possibility of a single digital presence for UK public libraries. The British Library is to lead an 18-month scoping project to establish the demand for and possible shape of a ‘single digital presence' for UK public libraries. Funded by Arts Council England and the Carnegie UK Trust, the project will investigate user expectations and demand for what a national online platform for public libraries might deliver, and will explore the network of stakeholder groups and organisations best placed to make it a reality. The scoping project will build on the work of the Single Digital Libraries Presence Steering Group, which has developed a range of early ideas on a universal online platform for the UK's public libraries [see: Building a Single Digital Presence for Public Libraries], and a report on a Single Digital Presence by Bibliocommons. The development of a single digital presence of this kind was one of the key recommendations of William Sieghart's 2014 Independent Library Report for England. [Full Announcement].

British Library Board appoints new Chief Executive. The Board of the British Library has appointed Roly Keating as the Library’s new Chief Executive Officer. [Full Announcement].

British Library to share millions of catalogue records. The British Library is to make its extensive collections of bibliographic records available for free to researchers and other libraries. The UK national library has around 14 million catalogue records comprising a wealth of bibliographic data. The initiative announced today will help expose this vast dataset to users worldwide, allowing researchers and other libraries to access and retrieve bibliographic records for publications dating back centuries and relating to every conceivable subject area. The new free service will operate in parallel to the British Library's priced bulk MARC data supply activity which is used extensively by large commercial customers. [Full Announcement].

The British Library goes wireless. The British Library has launched wireless internet connectivity in the public areas of its building at St Pancras. The new service offers wireless internet access (WiFi) throughout the 11 reading rooms, the 225-seat conference auditorium, the café and restaurant and even the outdoor Piazza area. It will enable readers, researchers and business-people to connect to the internet and access email using either their existing service provider or by using the Library’s own pay-as-you-go service. [Full Announcement].