00:00I called on our internal safety board to hold an urgent meeting today to review the arrangements after we heard the awful news, of course, about the theft at St. Fagans.
00:13I'm returning to Upper Stwyth in a moment and I'll be receiving a report and we'll be meeting with members of the Security Board so that we can review the arrangements, that we can provide assurance for ourselves and to the board, the Welsh Government and other stakeholders in terms of our arrangements.
00:36I've reached out to Amgadwa Cymri, naturally, to meet and to consider any lessons that could be learned from each other, anything that we can do to support each other, too, during this period.
00:52So we are taking those steps now in terms of our responsibility, of course, the safety of visitors, staff, as well as the collections.
01:03And we clearly look at the situation in the building itself and we're relatively content, of course, with the arrangements that we have, particularly following the repairs to the roof.
01:17So safety is at the top of the list for us.
01:21But we're also very aware of the cyber situation.
01:26And that is taking a great deal of focus for us, particularly at the National Library, because of the importance of the digital collections that we hold and the infrastructure in that regard, because the way that we reach Wales and the world more than any other method is through the digital collections that we have.
01:45The library's work in terms of the library's work in terms of the library's work in terms of the digital collections on Wikipedia, for example, has been seen 1.5 billion times.
01:56So our profile and the profile of Wales, indeed, on the international stage stems in a significant manner from the library's digital collections and those of our partners.
02:11We're part of company SOC, which is an arrangement across the public services in Wales that monitors cyber security across our various platforms.
02:25We're very proud to be part of that arrangement.
02:29And that was a scheme launched just over a year ago.
02:32And it's very innovative.
02:33We have, of course, internal teams who are responsible for our cyber security arrangements.
02:43We speak very often with the British Library and our other partners on those legal deposit arrangements across the United Kingdom.
02:55You remember that the British Library suffered a catastrophic attack back two years ago now, in October of 2023.
03:05Their website still isn't back up and running.
03:10The British Library doesn't have the ability to provide electronic legal deposit service for its users in London.
03:18But that electronic legal deposit stream that provides all of the digital publications to us so that we can provide them for library users.
03:30It's available in the library in Aberystwyth and also in Cardiff since April of this year.
03:36And that is true also in Scotland, Cambridge, Oxford and Trinity College Dublin.
03:43But that hasn't been restored in London yet.
03:46So it shows the seriousness of the situation for them and the work and the investment that we've put in in that direction as a priority.
Be the first to comment