British Library facts for kids
Quick facts for kids British Library |
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| British Library building at St Pancras from the piazza | |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Type | National library |
| Established | 1 July 1973 |
| Location | 96 Euston Road London, NW1 2DB |
| Coordinates | 51°31′46″N 0°07′37″W / 51.52944°N 0.12694°W |
| Branches | 1 (Boston Spa, West Yorkshire) |
| Collection | |
| Items collected | Books, journals, newspapers, magazines, sound and music recordings, patents, databases, maps, stamps, prints, drawings and manuscripts |
| Size | 170–200 million+ items 13,950,000 books |
| Legal deposit | Yes, provided in law by:
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| Access and use | |
| Access requirements | Open to anyone with a need to use the collections and services |
| Other information | |
| Budget | £142 million |
| Director | Sir Roly Keating (chief executive, since 12 September 2012) |
The British Library is a huge research library located in London, England. It is the national library of the United Kingdom. It is one of the biggest libraries in the world! The library holds an amazing 170 to 200 million items from many different countries.
Because it is a legal deposit library, the British Library gets a copy of almost every book published in the UK and Ireland. It also receives many books from other countries that are sold in the UK. The Library is a public body supported by the government.
The British Library is a major place for research. It has items in many languages and different forms. You can find books, old manuscripts, newspapers, music recordings, videos, and even patents. The library adds about three million new items every year. These items fill up about 9.6 kilometers (6 miles) of new shelf space!
Before 1973, the library was part of the British Museum. The main British Library building in London is next to St Pancras station. It was officially opened by Queen Elizabeth II in 1998. This building is considered very important for its architecture and history. There is also a large storage building and reading room in Boston Spa, Yorkshire.
Contents
- Discovering the British Library's History
- What is Legal Deposit?
- How to Use the Library's Reading Rooms
- Online and Digital Resources
- Digital Library System
- Cyber Attacks
- Exhibitions and Displays
- Library Services
- Newspapers and Stamps
- Amazing Items in the Collections
- Collections of Manuscripts
- Library Leadership
- Images for kids
Discovering the British Library's History
How the Library Started
The British Library officially began on 1 July 1973. It was created by the British Library Act of 1972. Before this, the national library was part of the British Museum. Many smaller libraries and collections joined to form the new British Library.
Old and Important Collections
The library's oldest collections come from gifts and purchases made in the 1700s. These are called the "foundation collections." They include books and manuscripts from important people like:
- Sir Robert Cotton (from the 1600s)
- Sir Hans Sloane (died 1753)
- Robert Harley (died 1721)
- The King's Library from King George III
- The Old Royal Library given by King George II
Moving to a New Home
For many years, the library's collections were spread out in different buildings across central London. There was also a lending center in Boston Spa, Yorkshire.
Early plans for the new library building would have meant tearing down a large area in Bloomsbury. But after a big campaign, this idea was changed. The library was built instead near St Pancras railway station.
The library's items started moving into the St Pancras building in 1997. By the end of that year, new reading rooms were open. From 1997 to 2009, most of the main collection was in this new building.
Modern Storage and Design
In 2008, the library announced it would move less-used items to a new storage facility in Boston Spa. This new building was finished in 2013. Over 200 kilometers (124 miles) of material were moved there. Items can be delivered to London from Boston Spa by a daily shuttle service.
The main library building was designed by Colin St John Wilson and MJ Long. Outside, there's a big open area with cool public art. This includes a large bronze statue of Isaac Newton by Eduardo Paolozzi. The British Library is the largest public building built in the UK during the 20th century.
Inside the building, there's a six-story glass tower. It holds the King's Library, which has 65,000 printed books and other items collected by King George III. In 2009, a new storage building opened in Boston Spa. It cost £26 million and can hold seven million items. Robots help to find and move these items from 162.7 miles of temperature-controlled shelves.
In 2013, the library announced it would start saving all websites ending in .uk. This helps to preserve the nation's "digital memory." This means future generations can see how the internet looked. The Euston Road building became a Grade I listed building in 2015. The library also plans to open a third location in Leeds.
What is Legal Deposit?
Legal deposit means that certain libraries have the right to receive a free copy of every item published in a country. In England, this idea goes back to at least 1610. The Copyright Act 1911 made it a rule.
The British Library and five other libraries in the UK and Ireland get free copies of published items. These other libraries are:
- The Bodleian Library at Oxford
- The University Library at Cambridge
- Trinity College Library in Dublin
- The National Library of Scotland
- The National Library of Wales
The British Library automatically receives a copy of everything published in Britain. The other libraries have to ask for the items they want.
The Legal Deposit Libraries Act 2003 also made it a rule for electronic documents to be deposited. This includes things like CD-ROMs and certain websites.
The library also has special collections called the Asia, Pacific and Africa Collections (APAC). These include records from the India Office and materials in Asian and African languages.
How to Use the Library's Reading Rooms
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Sitting on History, with its ball and chain, refers to the book as the captor of information which we cannot escape
The bust visible top left is Colin St. John Wilson RA by Celia Scott, 1998 a gift from the American Trust for the British Library. Sir Colin designed the British Library building
The British Library is open to anyone who truly needs to use its collections for research. If you have a permanent address and want to do research, you can apply for a Reader Pass. You will need to show proof of your signature and address.
The library's main catalogue is called "Explore the British Library." You can use it to search for items and order them. The large reading rooms have hundreds of seats. They are often full of researchers, especially during school holidays.
If you have a British Library Reader Pass, you can also view items from the Document Supply Collection at the Boston Spa site. You can also see the hard-copy newspaper collection there.
Online and Digital Resources
What You Can Find Online
The British Library has many items from its collections available online. Its Online Gallery has 30,000 images from old medieval books. You can even "turn the virtual pages" of some documents, like Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks.
British Library Sounds offers free online access to over 60,000 sound recordings. You can listen to music, plays, literature, and even wildlife sounds.
The British Library also has a commercial service that delivers digital copies of items. This service started in 2003. It offers over 100 million items, including journals, patents, and reports. These items were not available outside the library before due to copyright rules.
In 2010, the library launched its Management and business studies portal. This website gives digital access to many business research reports and articles.
In 2011, four million newspaper pages from the 18th and 19th centuries became available online. This project is called the British Newspaper Archive. You can search the archive for free, but there is a small fee to see the actual pages.
Electronic Collections
The Explore the British Library online catalogue has almost 57 million records. You can use it to search for and order items. The library's electronic collections include over 40,000 online journals and 800 databases. Some of these can be accessed from home if you have a St Pancras Reader Pass.
You can also find PhD theses (long research papers written for a doctorate degree) through the E-Theses Online Service (EThOS).
Digital Library System
Since 2013, the UK legal deposit libraries have worked together to create a shared digital system. This system stores electronic publications. It has four storage locations in London, Boston Spa, Aberystwyth, and Edinburgh. These locations are linked by a secure network. They automatically copy, check, and fix data.
Since 2013, the system has also saved a complete copy of every .uk website each year. This helps to preserve the UK's "digital memory" for the future.
Cyber Attacks
On 28 October 2023, the British Library's website went down because of a cyber attack. This was a ransomware attack. The library's catalogues and ordering systems were affected. This made most of the library's collections hard to access for readers. The library said that services would be disrupted for weeks, and some problems might last for months. The British Library continues to have technology problems because of these cyber-attacks.
Exhibitions and Displays
Many important books and manuscripts are on display for the public in the Sir John Ritblat Gallery. This gallery is free to enter and open seven days a week. Some famous items you can see include:
- Beowulf (an ancient English poem)
- The Lindisfarne Gospels (a beautiful old book)
- A Gutenberg Bible (one of the first books ever printed)
- Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales
- Jane Austen's History of England
- Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre
- Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures Under Ground
- A special room just for the Magna Carta (a very important historical document)
Besides the permanent display, the library often has special exhibitions. These have covered topics like maps, sacred texts, and the history of the English language.
Library Services
Business and IP Centre
In 2005, the British Library received money to turn two of its reading rooms into the Business & IP Centre. This center opened in 2006. It has a huge collection of business and intellectual property (IP) materials in the UK. IP includes things like patents and trade marks.
The collection has information on market research, companies, and journals. It's free to use in print and through online databases.
The staff at the center can help small businesses and entrepreneurs use all the resources. There's even a "Human Lending Library" service where entrepreneurs can get advice from business experts.
Document Supply Service
The British Library also has a Document Supply Service (BLDSS). This service is based in Boston Spa, Yorkshire. It holds 87.5 million items. This includes millions of journal titles, conference papers, books, and theses.
Many articles in this collection are available electronically and can be downloaded right away. BLDSS helps researchers and businesses get the materials they need. People can also order items through their local Public Library.
In 2013, BLDSS launched a new online system. This allows customers to search for items, see how much they cost, track orders, and manage their accounts.
Sound Archive
The British Library Sound Archive has over a million discs and 185,000 tapes. The recordings come from all over the world. They cover everything from music and drama to oral history and wildlife sounds. Some recordings are over 100 years old!
You can listen to recordings from the collection in special Reading Rooms at the library. In 2006, the library launched British Library Sounds. This online resource makes 50,000 of the Sound Archive's recordings available for free online.
Moving Image Services
Since 2012, the British Library has offered moving image services. These services let you access almost a million sound and moving image items at the library. For copyright reasons, you can only watch these from special computers inside the Reading Rooms.
These services include:
- BBC Pilot/Redux: This is a partnership with the BBC. Since 2007, it has recorded all of the BBC's national and some regional TV and radio broadcasts, 24 hours a day.
- Broadcast News: Since 2010, the library has recorded daily TV and radio news from seventeen different channels. Many of these programs have subtitles that you can search. This makes them great for research.
- Television & Radio Index for Learning & Teaching (TRILT): This is a database of all UK TV and radio broadcasts since 2001. It has 16 million records and grows by a million each year.
Newspapers and Stamps
Newspapers
The library has an almost complete collection of British and Irish newspapers since 1840. This is thanks to the legal deposit law of 1869. This law required newspapers to send a copy of each edition to the library. The collection has 660,000 bound volumes and 370,000 reels of microfilm. This is tens of millions of newspapers on 45 kilometers (28 miles) of shelves.
Before 2013, the newspaper section was in Colindale, North London. Now, the physical newspapers are divided between the St Pancras site (for high-use and rare items) and Boston Spa (for most of the collection).
Many newspapers are now available as digital copies or on microfilm. In 2010, a ten-year project began to digitize the newspaper archives. The British Newspaper Archive was launched in 2011. A special newspaper reading room opened at St Pancras in 2014. Here, you can look at microfilmed and digital materials. You can also request hard-copy newspapers from Boston Spa.
Philatelic Collections (Stamps)
The British Library Philatelic Collections are held at St Pancras. This collection of stamps and related items started in 1891. It has grown to include over 25 major collections and many smaller ones.
The collections include postage and revenue stamps, postal stationery, and covers (envelopes with stamps). They cover almost all countries and time periods. About 80,000 items can be seen in display frames. All other materials are available for students and researchers.
Amazing Items in the Collections
The British Library has many incredible items. Here are just a few highlights:
Ancient Treasures (1300 BC – 500 AD)
- Over 450 Chinese oracle bones (1300–1050 BC), the oldest items in the library.
- Fragments of the Herculaneum papyri that survived the eruption of Mount Vesuvius (before 79 AD).
- The Gandhāran Buddhist texts, some of the oldest Buddhist manuscripts ever found (1st–3rd centuries AD).
- The Codex Sinaiticus, a very old manuscript of the Bible in Greek (330–360 AD).
- The Codex Alexandrinus, another early Greek Bible manuscript (400–440 AD).
Medieval Marvels (500–1000 AD)
- The Dunhuang Star Chart, one of the first known maps of stars from ancient China (700 AD).
- The Lindisfarne Gospels, a beautifully decorated Latin Gospel book from Anglo-Saxon England (715–720 AD).
- The St Cuthbert Gospel, a very old gospel book with the oldest Western bookbinding (early 8th century).
- The Hyakumantō Darani, the earliest surviving examples of printing from Japan (764–770 AD).
- The Diamond Sutra, the world's earliest-dated printed book (868 AD).
- The only known complete manuscript of the Irq Bitig or Book of Omens, written in the Old Turkic script (9th century).
- The sole surviving manuscript copy of the famous poem Beowulf (975–1025 AD).
Later Medieval and Renaissance Gems (1000–1500 AD)
- Seven of the nine surviving manuscripts of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (10th–12th centuries).
- Two first edition copies of the Magna Carta (1215), a very important document in English history.
- The Chronicles of Mann, a medieval Latin manuscript about the early history of the Isle of Man (1262).
- Sumer is icumen in, the oldest known musical round (1261–1265).
- The Holkham Bible with illustrated biblical stories (1327–1335).
- One of the earliest copies of the Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer (1410).
- The Bedford Hours, a richly illustrated medieval book (1410–1430).
- The Book of Margery Kempe, the earliest surviving autobiography in English (1436).
- Two Gutenberg Bibles (1450–1455), among the first major books printed with movable type in Europe.
- The only surviving manuscript copy of Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur (1471-1483), about King Arthur.
- Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye, William Caxton's first printed book in English (1473).
Modern Masterpieces (1500 AD – Present)
- The Codex Arundel, one of Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks (1480–1518).
- Anne Boleyn's Book of Hours (1500), a prayer book owned by Henry VIII of England's wife.
- One of only three copies of the first edition of the Tyndale New Testament, the first Bible translated and mass-produced in English (1526).
- Henry VIII's personal copy of the Great Bible (1540).
- Rare first edition of Don Quixote, considered the first modern novel (1604).
- Five copies of William Shakespeare's First Folio of plays (1623).
- The Kaifeng Torah Scroll (1643–1663), one of only seven complete scrolls from the Synagogue in Kaifeng, China.
- Rare copy of The Birds of America by John James Audubon (1827–1838).
- First edition of the Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels (1848).
- The original handwritten lyrics of Beatles songs like "Yesterday" and "Help!" (1960s).
Maps, Music, and Famous Writings
The library also has:
- Important maps like the Anglo-Saxon Map and the Psalter world map.
- Original musical scores by famous composers such as Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, and The Beatles.
- Autograph letters, diaries, and notes from famous people like Charles Darwin, Mahatma Gandhi, Isaac Newton, Florence Nightingale, and William Shakespeare.
- Original manuscripts of famous novels and poetry, including Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë, Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens, The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling, and Alice's Adventures Under Ground by Lewis Carroll.
Collections of Manuscripts
Main Collections
The British Library has several major collections of manuscripts. The first three were brought together to form the initial holdings of the British Museum in 1753:
- Cotton manuscripts
- Harley manuscripts
- Sloane manuscripts
Other Important Collections
Other well-known collections include:
- Arundel Manuscripts
- Egerton manuscripts
- King's manuscripts
- Royal manuscripts
- Stefan Zweig Collection
- Stowe manuscripts
Additional Manuscripts
The Additional Manuscripts series includes all other manuscripts that have been given to, bought by, or left to the library since 1756. This series continues the numbering from the Sloane manuscripts.
Library Leadership
The British Library has many different types of employees, including librarians, curators, and digital experts.
Chief Executives
- 1973–1984: Sir Harry Hookway (first Chief Executive)
- 1984–1991: Kenneth Cooper
- 1991–2000: Dr Brian Lang
- 2000–2012: Dame Lynne Brindley
- 2012–present: Sir Roly Keating
Chief Librarians
- 2016–2018: Caroline Brazier (first Chief Librarian)
- 2018–present: Liz Jolly
Images for kids
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The British Library branch at Boston Spa (on Thorp Arch Trading Estate), West Yorkshire
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The British Library with St Pancras railway station behind it
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Interior of the British Library, with the smoked glass wall of the King's Library in the background.
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The mechanical book handling system (MBHS) used to deliver requested books from stores to reading rooms.
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Bronze sculpture. Bill Woodrow's 'Sitting on History' was purchased for the British Library by Carl Djerassi and Diane Middlebrook in 1997.
Sitting on History, with its ball and chain, refers to the book as the captor of information which we cannot escape
The bust visible top left is Colin St. John Wilson RA by Celia Scott, 1998 a gift from the American Trust for the British Library. Sir Colin designed the British Library building -
Bronze sculpture on the piazza of Newton, after William Blake, by Eduardo Paolozzi, 1995
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Tape players used in the British Library Sound Archives, 2009 photo
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Former British Library Newspapers building, Colindale
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Philatelic collections
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The entrance gate and its shadow (designed by David Kindersley and Lida Lopes Cardozo Kindersley)
