British Library
From open-encyclopedia.com - the free encyclopedia.
The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom and one of the world's greatest research libraries, holding over 150 million items and adding some 3 million every year. As of March 2004 the library holds 11.2 million monographs and receives more than 41,500 serials.
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Historical background
The British Library is surprisingly young compared to equivalent institutions, 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).
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. Since 1997, however, the entire collection has been housed in one building, designed specially for the purpose by the architect Colin St. John Wilson. The new building is sited near the Kings Cross and St. Pancras rail stations in the London Borough of Camden and is the largest public building constructed in the UK in the 20th century.
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.
A number of important works are on display to the general public; the other items can be accessed in reading rooms that are restricted to persons with a legitimate research interest which cannot easily be satisfied elsewhere.
Legal deposit
An Act of Parliament in 1911 established the principle of the Legal Deposit, ensuring that the British Library, along with five other libraries in Britain and Ireland, is entitled to receive a free copy of every item published in Britain 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, a Private Member's Bill, the Legal Deposit Libraries Act 2003, was passed which extended the Legal Deposit requirements to electronic documents such as CD ROMs and selected websites.
See here, from the British Library's website, for more information about legal deposit.
Miscellaneous information
The library also holds the Oriental and India Office Collections (OIOC), 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's notebooks and other great works can be turned electronically.
The use of the libraries web catalogue also continues to increase. In 2003 more than 9.7 million searches were conducted.
Highlights of the collections
- 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
- The Magna Carta
- Papyrus Egerton 2, the Egerton Gospel
- The only surviving copy of the poem Beowulf
See also
- British Museum Reading Room
- British literature
- UK topics
- List of digital library projects
- National Library of Scotland
- National Library of Wales
External links
- The British Library homepage
- 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
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