If you have anything to do with historical research, you probably know that most of the British Library’s online services have been out of action since October 2023 because of a ransomware attack. The knock-on effect for By The Sword Linked is that outgoing links to UINs in the Main Catalogue, Archives and Manuscripts Catalogue record permalinks, ESTC numbers, and EThOS thesis IDs are all broken. This incident shows a problem with linked data: if one website goes down it also affects other sites. But it also shows that making Open Access publications and reusable datasets available in more than one place can limit the damage.

The good news is that the Shared Research Repository doesn’t seem to have been affected. The repository makes available Open Access books, reports, and datasets. This includes all the thesis metadata from EThOS, last updated in November 2023. In 2021, I used an earlier version of this dataset to add wiki pages for 600 theses relevant to the British Civil Wars, linked to pages for authors and subjects (and many of the authors are linked to Wikidata IDs). In many cases, the EThOS data includes a link to the full text of a thesis at an institutional repository.

This week I’ve imported wiki pages for some British Library manuscript collections and volumes. I compiled the data from my own research notes and the printed catalogues at the Internet Archive. Where I’ve found printed catalogue entries, the wiki page for the collection links to the Internet Archive (although you might find the links unreliable because the IA servers are overloaded). Some collections are linked to subjects and creators, but many aren’t because they’re too miscellaneous. The easiest way to see what’s there is to drill down from the page for Western Manuscripts. I’m working on more data for British Library manuscripts, but I don’t know when I’ll have time to finish it because I’m starting a new job soon. Meanwhile, I’ve put up a general list of interim catalogues and finding aids.