The Signet Library’s online catalogue https://sign.koha-ptfs.co.uk/ has recently undergone improvements and updates that protect our data and make information about our collections more easily available to members and to researchers. The catalogue is run in conjunction with our longstanding partners Open Fifth (formerly PTFS-EU) and is based on a mature and widely-deployed open source platform, Koha, whose Maori name, meaning “gift”, reflects the software’s New Zealand origins.
When the Signet Library first launched an online computer catalogue in 2000, only the modern legal collections featured, but since 2010 we have been working to move the Library’s nationally-important historical collections there also. Although this is still very much a work in progress, a very significant part of the historic collection is now present. In 2020 this was augmented by a separate online catalogue of the WS Society archive, https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/data/gb1487-ws created in partnership with Jisc, the UK digital, data and technology agency.
The British Library cyberattack of late 2023 has highlighted the vulnerabilities of library data storage and the importance of vigilance. More recently, this concern has been joined by a new pressure, imposed by AI agents whose efforts to data-scrape the country’s institutions has become a predominant challenge to back end teams. The danger here is not so much one of knowledge theft as of server overload, and we are grateful to Open Fifth and Jisc whose efforts have kept our own data online with almost no interruption over this period.