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Page last updated: 2 December 2024
Latest service changes
Withdrawal of a number of specialist digital resources
A message from Richard Ovenden
Over the past few weeks, we have taken a number of specialist digital resources offline as a precautionary step. We acknowledge how disruptive this has been to many of the scholars and others in the communities that use these resources, but I hope you will understand the urgency with which we took these steps.
The University of Oxford has recently issued new guidance in order to ensure protection from cyber attack, and in the light of that updated guidance we have taken a number of specialist resources (which have sat on older technologies, and where we have lacked income streams to support them) offline.
This decision has also been taken in the light of the severe damage done to the digital infrastructure of the British Library from a malicious cyber attack, we are trying to learn from some of the lessons of that incident.
The affected resources are:
- Bodleian Incunable Catalogue Online
- British Book Trade Index
- Broadside Ballads Online
- Forced Migration Online – a world of information on human displacement
- Gough Map of Great Britain
- Italian Opera Aria on the London Stage 1705-1801
- Johnson Allegro catalogue (available on an Oxford network only)
- London Book Trade
- London Stage Online
- Medieval Libraries of Great Britain
- Polonsky Foundation Digitization Project
- Serica
- TEXT-inc: a corpus of texts printed in the 15th century
- William Godwin's Diary
It does not mean that these resources have been abandoned by the Bodleian Libraries. For many of them we were already planning steps to move them onto more resilient and efficient technologies. We will continue to pursue these discussions with those in the communities which used the resources, and will continue to seek funding to enable us to make both short and medium-long term improvement and enhancements.
Our main digital platforms and services (such as SOLO, MARCO, ORA, Bodleian Archives & Manuscripts, Digital Bodleian, Scan and Deliver, and specialist manuscript catalogues) remain available.
Some of the content from the withdrawn resources is also available in Digital Bodleian. In other cases the data is being transferred to our ORA and SDS services, in others archived copies of the resources retain much of the functionality.
We will be updating you on the progress. In the meantime if you have any questions, or suggestions for support, collaboration or funding we would welcome hearing from you.
Thank you for your patience and understanding
– Richard Ovenden, Bodley’s Librarian
