British Library
 |
British Library Ossulston St entrance, with distinctive red logo. |
The
British Library is the
national library of the
United Kingdom and is one of the world's most significant
research libraries, holding over 150 million items. The library includes around 25 million books,
[1] along with substantial additional collection of historical items dating back as far as 300 BC. As of March 2004 the library holds 11.2 million
monographs and receives more than 41,500 regular
serials. As a
legal deposit library, the BL receives copies of all books produced in the UK, including all books from abroad which are reprinted in the UK, and many items which are only printed abroad. The British Library is adding some 3 million items every year.
The Guinness Book of World Records currently lists the American
Library of Congress as the "World's Largest Library".
[2] However, this is based on the shelf space the collection occupies; the Library of Congress states that its collection fills about 530 miles (850 km),
[3] while the British Library reports about 388 miles (625 km) of shelves.
[4] On the other hand, the Library of Congress holds about 130 million items with 29 million books,
[5] as against approximately 150 million items with 25 million books for the British Library.
As an institution the British Library is surprisingly young compared to equivalent institutions in other countries, having been created in 1973 by the
British Library Act 1972. Prior to this, the national library was part of the
British Museum, which provided the bulk of the holdings of the new library, alongside various smaller organisations which were folded in (such as the
British National Bibliography). In 1983, the library absorbed the
National Sound Archive.
For many years its collections were dispersed in various buildings around
central London, in places such as
Bloomsbury (right next to the British Museum),
Chancery Lane, and
Holborn, with the lending library at
Boston Spa,
Yorkshire and the newspaper library at
Colindale, north-west London. However, since 1997 the main collection has been housed in a single new building in
Euston Road next to
St. Pancras railway station. The new library was designed specially for the purpose by the architect
Colin St. John Wilson. Facing Euston Road is a large piazza that includes pieces of
Public Art by
Eduardo Paolozzi (a bronze statue based on
William Blake's study of
Isaac Newton) and
Anthony Gormley. It is the largest public building constructed in the United Kingdom in the 20th century. However, newspapers are still held at Colindale and there is also a collection at the Boston Spa site.
At the heart of the building is a three story glass tower containing
The King's Library, with 65,000 printed volumes along with other pamphlets, manuscripts and maps collected by
King George III between 1763 and 1820.
 |
Interior of the British Library, with the smoked glass wall of the King's Library in the background. |
A number of important works are on display to the general public in a gallery called "Sir John Ritblat Gallery: Treasures of the British Library" which is open to the public seven days a week at no charge. The Library also stages temporary exhibitions on a wide range of subjects which can be illuminated by the items in its collection - which is almost anything, not just literature. Recent exhibitions include
Elizabeth Barrett Browning and
Benjamin Franklin (2006).
Other items can be accessed in the reading rooms. In the past the Library emphasised its role as a "library of last resort" for people who needed access to deep and specialised collections which they could not find anywhere else. Nowadays it adopts a more welcoming approach and emphasises on its website that anyone who wishes to carry out research should be granted a reader's pass, providing they furnish the necessary identification for security purposes. The Library has come under criticism for admitting undergraduate students (who have access to their own university libraries) to the reading rooms, but the Library says that they have always admitted undergraduates as long as they have a legitimate personal, work-related or academic research purpose.
According to the website, more than half a million people use the Library's reading rooms every year. The huge reading rooms cover hundreds of seats which are filled with researchers every day.
An
Act of Parliament in 1911 established the principle of the
Legal Deposit, ensuring that the British Library, along with five other libraries in
Great Britain and
Ireland, is entitled to receive a free copy of every item published in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. The other five libraries are: the
Bodleian Library at
Oxford; the
University Library at
Cambridge;
Trinity College Library in
Dublin; and the National Libraries of
Scotland and
Wales. The British Library is the only one that is entitled to receive a copy of everything within one month of publication; the other five have to wait for up to one year.
In 2003 the
Ipswich MP
Chris Mole introduced a
Private Member's Bill which eventually passed, becoming the
Legal Deposit Libraries Act 2003. This Act extends the Legal Deposit requirements to electronic documents such as
CD-ROMs and selected
websites. The BL explains its policies on legal deposit
here. As with the Library of Congress in the United States, the BL has retained copies of every publication in the English language which it deemed significant over the last 100 years.
The British Library Newspapers section is based in Colindale in north London. The Library has a more or less complete collection of British and Irish newspapers since 1840, owing in part to legal deposit legislation of 1869 mandating that the library receive a copy of each edition of a newspaper. London editions of national daily and Sunday newspapers are complete back to 1801. In total the collection consists of 660,000 bound volumes and 370,000 reels of
microfilm containing tens of millions of newspapers with 52,000 titles on 45km of shelves.
A collection of particular interest is the
Thomason Tracts, containing 7,200
seventeenth century newspapers, and the
Burney Collection featuring newspapers from the late
eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries. The Thomason Tracts and Burney collections are held at St Pancras, and are available in facsimile.
The section also has extensive records of non-
British newspapers in languages that use the
Latin and
Cyrillic alphabets. The collection is less substantial for languages of the
Middle East and the rest of Asia, though some holdings of these are held at the main library in St. Pancras.
 |
British Library main building, London |
The library also holds the
Oriental and India Office Collections (OIOC), Now called APAC (Asia, Pacific & Africa Collections) which contain the collections of the
India Office Library and Records, and materials in the languages of Asia and of north and north-east Africa.
The British Library participates in a project called '
Bibliotheca Universalis' which aims at publishing major works on the
web. In the British Library's
Digital library project collections can be toured online and the virtual pages of
Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks and other great works can be turned electronically. The British Library's
secure electronic delivery service, started in 2003 at a cost of 6 million pounds, brings access to more than one hundred million items (including 280,000 journal titles, 50 million patents, 5 million reports, 476,000 U.S. dissertations and 433,000 conference proceedings) for researchers and library patrons worldwide which were previously unavailable outside the Library due to
copyright restrictions.
The use of the Library's web catalogue also continues to increase. In 2003 more than 9.7 million searches were conducted.
* The
Stein collection from Central Asia.
* The
Diamond Sutra, claimed to be the world's oldest dated printed book
* The
Lindisfarne Gospels* Two
Gutenberg Bibles
* Two 1215 copies of
Magna Carta*
Papyrus Egerton 2, the
Egerton Gospel* The only surviving
manuscript copy of the poem
Beowulf* 347 leaves of the
Codex Sinaiticus* Working manuscripts by
J.S. Bach,
W.A. Mozart,
Gustav Mahler and
Benjamin Britten.
The British Library
Philatelic Collections are the National Philatelic Collections of the United Kingdom. The Collections were established in 1891 with the donation of the
Tapling Collection, they steadily developed and now comprise over twenty five major collections and a number of smaller ones, encompassing a wide-range of disciplines. The collections include
postage and
revenue stamps,
postal stationery,
essays,
proofs,
covers and entries, '
cinderella stamp' material, specimen issues,
airmails, some
postal history materials, official and private
posts, etc., for almost all countries and periods.
An extensive display of material from the collections is on exhibit and is probably the best permanent display of diverse classic stamps and philatelic material in the world. Approximately 80,000 items on 6,000 sheets may be viewed in 1,000 display frames; 2,400 sheets are from the Tapling Collection. All other material, which covers the whole world, is available to students and researchers by appointment.
As well as these extensive collections, the subject literature is very actively acquired, and makes the British Library one of the world's prime philatelic
research centres.
*
*
*
British Museum Reading Room*
National Library of Scotland*
National Library of Wales*
National Archives*
National Sound Archive*
List of digital library projects*
British literature*
The British Library homepage*
The British Library Catalogue*
The King's Library contained within The British Library
*
The 'Bibliotheca Universalis' homepage*
The World's Earliest Dated Printed Book*
Turning the Pages, digitizations of a few important books, with explanations (Macromedia Shockwave format)
*
The British Library Act, 1972
