Inside three years of turmoil that have left the British Library ‘in chaos’

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It seemed like a normal autumn day, that Saturday in 2023 when Winston Smith* slipped quickly through the glass doors of the British Library in time for his shift. But as he arrived at his desk in one of the reading rooms, he noticed his computer wasn’t working. Neither was anyone else’s.

There were no senior staff in that day to assist the skeleton weekend crew, and soon requests began piling up from researchers looking to access the library’s 200 million plus archive of books, papers and historic documents. That first day of chaos became two, then three — without a full explanation or a fix, as a haphazard system of paper request slips was put in place to give users access to at least some documents. “It put the library back into the Stone Age.”

It was only after Smith cornered a frazzled senior HR manager in the corridor the next week that he was finally told what was going on: they had been targeted in a ransomware attack.

The hack, which hit national news back at the end October 2023, would in some ways be the defining challenge of this century for the beloved national library. But insiders say the incident was just one of a number of issues. Financial pressures, staff tensions, and a revolving door of four chief executives in less than two years have also helped to leave one of the country’s leading cultural institutions feeling rudderless.

Tensions have risen again in recent weeks after the British Library announced controversial plans to repurpose a quarter of its much-loved, free-to-use reading rooms into paid-for flexible workspace. At a town hall last month, staff took aim at interim CEO Jeremy Silver, accusing library leadership of going in the wrong direction.

How have things ended up this way? 

Over the past few weeks, we’ve spoken to current and former staff, from those on the frontlines to those at the very top of the organisation, to paint a picture of what’s been going on for the last three years. They described an organisation “in chaos” and lacking a “sense of direction” as it struggles to recover from a bruising few years. For the incoming CEO, Dr Paul Bate, who starts his new job today, it all amounts to a rather long to-do list if he is to tackle an ongoing crisis of confidence at the library.