Don't Privatise the British Library's Reading Rooms: Government Should Support the Library Instead
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/profile/editorial. "The Guardian view on the British Library: don’t privatise the reading rooms | Editorial | The Guardian." November 9, 2026. www.theguardian.com
The Gist
The Guardian says the British Library's troubles were caused by a cyber-attack and by government failures on cybersecurity, not by how it runs its reading rooms. Renting three reading rooms to a private company and outsourcing security would damage a public space that everyone relies on, so the government should step in and find another way to fix the library's finances.
Conclusion
The British Library should not rent out three of its reading rooms to a private contractor or outsource its security; instead, the government should take responsibility for the library's crisis and find an alternative solution.
Premises
- The British Library's current financial and morale crisis stems largely from the cyber-attack and the Covid pandemic, not from any flaw in the library's public-access model.
- The public accounts committee blamed the government for lacking a strategic approach to cybersecurity, so politicians bear responsibility for past mistakes and should help the library recover.
- Unlike temporary exhibitions, reading rooms are permanent spaces designed for reading and study, so handing them to a commercial operator would change the character of a cherished institution.
- Outsourcing security staff would contradict the government's own commitment to insourcing.
- The library is a valued public space open to all and an essential part of a neglected higher-education ecosystem, and as a national institution everyone has a stake in it; privatising parts of it would undermine this role.
- Government provides 84% of the library's £170m budget, so ministers have both the standing and the responsibility to engage constructively and seek a different solution.
Assumptions
- Renting out reading rooms to a commercial operator would reduce public access or the suitability of those spaces for study.
- Alternative funding or support solutions exist and the government is able to provide them.
- The causes of the crisis determine who should pay for its remedy (government responsibility for cybersecurity failures implies government funding).
- The public-access character of the reading rooms is more valuable than the revenue that renting them would generate.
- Consistency with government policy (insourcing) is a legitimate reason to reject the outsourcing proposal.
- Commercial operation inevitably conflicts with the reading rooms' study function.