British Library

British Library, national library of the United Kingdom, established in 1972 as “a national centre for reference, study, and bibliographical and other information services” to support “in particular, institutions of education and learning and libraries and information centres in industry.” Originally located in the British Museum in the Bloomsbury area of London, in 1997 the library moved to a new facility in the Saint Pancras area of the city.

The library's collection, developed over 250 years, aims at representing every age of written civilization, every language, and all topics. The collection comprises more than 18 million volumes of printed books, periodicals, and journals (including 130,000 current periodicals and journals), 33 million patent specifications, about 2 million cartographic items, 8 million philatelic items, 600,000 volumes of newspapers, about 900,000 sound discs, and millions of manuscripts and papers of international importance. Included in the library's collections are the earliest known copy of the Anglo-Saxon epic poem Beowulf, two copies of the Magna Carta, and the Codex Sinaiticus, a 4th-century Biblical manuscript. Users of the library include industry and the commercial sector, academics and scholars; authors; scientists and engineers; and lawyers and patent agents. More than 400,000 readers—20 percent of them from overseas—visit the library's reading rooms each year. The library also handles more than 300,000 requests for information and about 4 million requests for documents each year.

The British Library funds external research in the library and information field and initiates and supports cooperative programs within the library community. The library also provides priced services—such as document supply and consultancy services—from which it earns 30 percent of its operating expenditure, runs a specialized publishing house, and operates a bookshop. A new building for the British Library is currently under construction at Saint Pancras, London. The library is the result of a consolidation of eight libraries under a single administration: the former British Museum Library (founded 1757), India Office Library and Records (1801), Patent Office Library (1885), National Central Library (1916), British National Bibliography Ltd. (1949), National Lending Library for Science and Technology (1962), Office of Scientific and Technical Information (1965), Patent Office Library incorporated into National Library of Science and Invention, as well as the HMSO Binderies and the National Sound Archives.

Reviewed by: British Library