Facts and figures
The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom and one of the world's greatest libraries.
- We receive a copy of every publication produced in the UK and Ireland
- The collection includes well over 150 million items, in most known languages
- 3 million new items are added every year
- We have manuscripts, maps, newspapers, magazines, prints and drawings, music scores, and patents
- The Sound Archive keeps sound recordings from 19th-century cylinders to CD, DVD and MD recordings
- We house 8 million stamps and other philatelic items
- All this requires over 625 km of shelves, and grows by 12km every year
- If you see 5 items each day, it would take you over 80,000 years to see the whole of the collection
- The world's earliest dated printed book, the Diamond Sutra, is sometimes on display in our exhibition galleries alongside many other treasures
- We have on-site space for over 1,200 Readers
- Over 16,000 people use the collections each day (on site and online)
- Online catalogues, information and exhibitions can be found on this website
- We operate the world's largest document delivery service providing millions of items a year to customers all over the world
In depth
Access
- The British Library serves business and industry, researchers, academics and students, in the UK and world-wide
- Each year:
- Six million searches are generated by the British Library online catalogue
- Nearly 400,000 visit our Reading Rooms
- Over 100 million items have been supplied to users all over the world
Collections
Treasures include:
- Magna Carta
- Lindisfarne Gospels
- Leonardo da Vinci's Notebook
- The Times first edition from 18 March 1788
- Beatles manuscripts
- The recording of Nelson Mandela's Rivonia trial speech
- Material over 3,000 years old (Chinese oracle bones) - and today's newspapers
- 310,000 manuscript volumes: from Jane Austen to James Joyce; Handel to the Beatles
- 60 million patents
- Over 4 million maps
- Over 260,000 journal titles
The building at St Pancras
- The largest public building constructed in the UK in the 20th century
- The basements extend to a depth of 24.5 metres
- A total floor area of over 112,000 sq metres spread over 14 floors - 9 above ground, 5 below
- 10 million bricks and 180,000 tonnes of concrete were needed to complete the building
The buildings at Boston Spa
- Originally an ordnance factory
- Specifically designed for document delivery service processes
- Over 100km of shelving housing a collection devoted to interlibrary loan.
