So far, losses at the venue are estimated at millions of dollars, with the outage affecting its website, online and help systems, as well as some on-site services, including public Wi-Fi.
Telephone lines and on-site trading activities at the main building, based in London, were also affected, as was another facility in Yorkshire.
As for the reading rooms, they will be open for personal study, although access to the collection’s items is very limited, in addition to the inability to access the digital catalog.
This attack by hackers was so massive that reader registration was also unsuccessful and only feeds of the series requested before October 26 will be available.
The cause of the incident has not yet been confirmed, but ransomware or data hijacking is likely due to the significant disruption.
The UK National Library's book collection is the most sought after by researchers and scholars globally, and is estimated to contain up to 200 million items across 400 miles of shelves. This includes the Magna Carta, and the handwritten lyrics to the Magna Carta. The Beatles and the world's largest collection of Geoffrey Chaucer's works.
This personality was a writer, philosopher and diplomat, known above all as the author of The Canterbury Tales.
Considered the most important English poet of the Middle Ages and the first to be buried in Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey, the collection of Chaucer's manuscripts is among the most famous in the institution's huge gallery.
The British Library's collection is one of the largest in the world, containing around 170 million items including books, magazines, manuscripts, newspapers, maps, sheet music, stamps, digital materials and sound recordings.
Other valuable items include the first preserved copy of the English epic poem “Beowulf” and the first collected edition of the works of William Shakespeare.
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