On Demand

Impact of Covid-19 - Update 5 November 2020

We can confirm that you can still order and receive content through British Library On Demand for items held at the British Library site in Yorkshire during the 4 week lockdown period starting on 5 November 2020. We will be unable to access our physical collection held at the British Library site in London until lock down restrictions ease, currently early December. Requests for items held in London will be asked to reapply in 4 weeks.

We have updated our workflows and processes in order to maintain staff safety and well-being. These necessary changes may further impact our service delivery times. If you need Covid-19 related research content or you need an item urgently, you can order through our two hour delivery service. Please note, you will not receive the requested content within the two hour time frame, but this allows us to prioritise Covid-19 related requests. These will not be charged at the premium two hour rate. 

Due to the implementation of Covid-19 safe working practices, we are currently unable to process 24-hour requests in the stated time frame. These requests will also not be charged at the premium rate.

Loans

Our On Demand loan service restarted on 17 August 2020 and we will continue to supply items from our collections held in Yorkshire. We cannot provide a loan service for items held at our London site - requests for loans from London will be asked to reapply in 10 weeks.

Due to the new lock down we confirm the suspension of auto renewal fees from 5 November until further notice.

EHESS

The British Library is committed to support our colleagues in Higher Education as you make the necessary transition to online teaching. We can confirm that you can still order and receive copies of chapters and articles through the BL and CLA EHESS service for items held at the British Library site in Yorkshire during the 4 week lockdown period starting on 5 November 2020. We will be unable to access our physical collection held at the British Library site in London until lock down restrictions ease, currently early December. Requests for items held in London will be asked to reapply in 4 weeks.

Please note that we are prioritising capacity over speed, and so we will be unable to meet our published two day speed of service. This is to ensure that our print collections are handled the minimum number of times by the least number of people to limit risk to staff. Please be aware, should our capacity become stretched, or the situation with Covid-19 change, we may need to scale back our operations. We would therefore ask you not to submit bulk quantities in your orders, but spread the orders out. This will help us manage our capacity. We will let you know as soon as possible if anything changes.

Contact us

If you have any further queries please contact our Customer Service team through email at customer-services@bl.uk.

Thank you for your patience during this period. We look forward to continue working closely with you.