The library and its 27 branches continue to struggle through a ransomware attack that has disabled its networks, rendered its hundreds of public computers useless and turned its normal operations upside down.
Book checkouts are being done by spreadsheet. Column A: the library user’s account number. Column B: the book’s bar code number. The low-tech inventory will be integrated with the library’s normal account system at some future, unknown date.
With its computer networks down, the library has no way to check books back into its system, making it more convenient for everyone if you just hold onto your books for a little while. In normal times, the library says it loans out more than 1.1 million books and other items each month.
You can search the library’s catalog, but only from home, or from your phone, not from any of the computer terminals in libraries. The shutdown, which library officials have attributed to a ransomware attack, has now lingered for four weeks, with no solid estimate on when full library services may return.
The downtown library’s fifth-floor computer lab — often the most crowded space in the library — is empty. Dozens of computers, normally available for free to anyone who walks in, sit idle, cordoned off as if physically infected, rather than just virtually. Bringing your own computer won’t help: Wi-Fi networks are down too. (I initially sat down in the Greenwood library to write this story about the library’s broken computer network, before remembering that I couldn’t work there because the library’s computer network was broken.)
Bypass paywall: https://archive.is/yVa8c
Demanding a ransom from a public library system- people can be such scum.