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Archive 1

Building

Slightly suprised that there's no info about the new building, it's budget over-runs, small size etc Dan100 (Talk) 19:50, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

What about the digs Prince Charles took at it?Sumergocognito 04:10, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

I agree with these two earlier commentators. The building, its virtues and deficiencies, the controversies surrounding it, Prince Charles's remarks, etc., all are worthy of mention in this article.--MediaLion*

largest robotic library physical retreival system

It is also worth mentioning the Additional Storage Building (ASB), holds the worlds largest robotic library physical retreival system: a robotic crane will have sole access, retreival, and re-stacking tasks for seven million items. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Chrishibbard7 (talk • contribs) 22:55, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Photos of gate?

Is it necessary to have two photos of the gate and its metal grill in the section 'Historical Background'? The one on the left is not very good quality, and should perhaps be taken down, since the one on the right serves the purpose just as well.

86.133.239.63 15:14, 11 March 2006 (UTC)


Perhaps a section on the British Library in Popular Culture might be added, so that a link to Read_or_Die might find a home? After all, how many libraries have their own anime movie and television series?

Yes, but that is about the old British Library, the one that used to be in the British Museum amybe better added to this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Museum_Reading_Room —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.66.229.8 (talk) 11:05, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Incorporation of some photos

I found some recent photos about the British Library (licensed under cc:by 2.5) we could incorporate in this article. --phil 18:48, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Image of Zacarias Moussaoui card

The Image:MN00626-1A.jpg showing Zacarias Moussaoui's library card is really of no relevance to the British Library and should be removed. Did Zacarias Moussaoui and his colleagues plan acts of terrorism in the British Library? No. Did Zacarias Moussaoui use the British Library to read up on bomb making or how to fly an aeroplane? Probably not. He was issued it when on a Masters course in London in 1994 and the card had expired in 1999. Is Zacarias Moussaoui in any way relevant to the history of the British Library? No. Are other readers far more relevant to the history of the BL? Of course - Karl Marx, Oscar Wilde, Lenin... see British Museum Reading Room for more.

If Zacarias Moussaoui just happens to have been a reader at the British Library and there is no other significance (lets face it, the British Library isn't even mentioned on the Zacarias Moussaoui page), then there is no reason to include the image here. -- Solipsist 16:12, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

We claim here legal deposit status came from the 1911 Act - it was certainly enshrined in that Act, but I'm looking at a summary of the Copyright Act 1842, and it certainly seems to be in force there. Hmm. Shimgray | talk | 13:08, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

I can't find the source, but I remember the idea dating back even to the 16th century, so you are almost certainly correct. DGtal 08:29, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
The origin in the UK seems to be an agreement between the Stationers and Bodley himself, which later got broadened and made statutory at a later date. Time for more digging... Shimgray | talk | 19:02, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

POV and PR-speak

I've been through the article and made minor tweaks to some of it, mainly for style. It seemed to be written like a BL press release in parts, even if the claims made were true. Some of it was superlatives which must be POV. So I've broken up some of the waffly sentences, made passives active, etc. The article indicates when services are free; it's a bit coy when they are not. I've tried to correct that where I knew the facts.

The article doesn't discuss the material that the BL has freely available online (probably because it doesn't actually have much). This is an area that must grow, so I've added a section for it. It ought to say more about the failed collaboration with Microsoft, but I've added what I have. Roger Pearse 14:16, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Second Largest Library

The whole idea that the British Library is the "largest in the world" is contradicted by the vast majority of authorities--including the library's own website, which claims that it owns around 13 million books--far fewer than is proclaimed in more casual assessments. By all standard measures (shelf space and book numbers), the Library of Congress is much bigger. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ckkgourmet (talk • contribs) 01:23, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

You mean 150 million items, as opposed to the Library Of Congress 130 million. This whole who has the largest library by empty shelf space or physical size is plainly ludicrous, surely it should be measured by number of items especially as so many are priceless manuscripts at the BL. Twobells (talk) 22:31, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Will you please illuminate us and substantiate your claim that the Library of Congress holds the world record by shelf space because there are miles of empty shelves? Or are you implying that the US Congress bribed the guys from Guinness World Records and told them "hey, ignore the fact that our miles of shelf space are empty"?

In fact, the shelf space referred to in all such metrics is actually that used--one should not need to rely on conspiracy theories to maintain the image of particular libraries. This is described on the institution's websites. I might add that those above who appear to think that the BL somehow holds precious manuscripts (and, by implication, that the Library of Congress does not) are entirely wrong. In fact, the LOC does hold numerous manuscript materials of the upmost importance, and not just works of European cultural and intellectual history (which it appears the commentator thinks is the only kind). As for the issue of "items," any librarian knows that "items" are counted very differently by different libraries. For example, does a stack of manuscript pages by a single author count as one item or several? This is precisely why shelf space statistics are important.

Deposit Libraries and London Public Libraries

What is often overlooked is that besides the British Library [1] at St Pancras, London's Local Authority 'Public Libraries' including many major reference and central libraries, stock an additional 16 million books as well as 2.7 million CDs, with around 1.6 million new books added to the library stock each year. [2] [3] [4] [5] There are also some of the largest museum libraries in the world amongst London's 250 museums. [6] [7][8] [9] [10] London is also home to many of the most highly respected academic and specialist libraries in the world, with over 21 million books held in London Academic Libraries. [11] [12][13]

The Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) also provide specialist funding to five 'National Research Libraries' due to their specialised collections which include over 27 million books, these Libraries are Cambridge University Library (7 million books), Bodleian Library and Oxford University Libraries (11 million books), British Library of Political and Economic Science (London School of Economics) (4 million books)[14], the School of Oriental and African Studies (London) (1.2 million books) [[15]] and the John Rylands University Library (University of Manchester) (4 million books). [16] [17]. A further important National Library Resource is the NHS National Library for Health (NLH), a database which allows medical professionals to access millions of specialised books, reports and journals. [18] [19] [20]] [21]

In terms of shelf space the British Library has recently opened a massive new storage facility in 2008 at Boston Spa. The new facility has 262 kilometres (163 miles) of shelf space and room for over 7 million books taking the British Libaries shelf space to over 887 kilometres (551 miles). [22]] [23] The British Library also opened a new book conservation centre in 2007 at it's St Pancras site in London. [24]. The library plans to close it's Colindale Newspaper Site as part of it's long term strategy which includes the development of the 'UK Research Reserve' [25] [26] and the eventual digitising of newspaper stocks and the removal of physical newspaper stocks to Boston Spa. [[27]] [28] The British Library secured a major funding increase in November 2007 [29] and has recently secured both the Harold Pinter [30] and Ted Hughes [[31] collections for the nation. As well as Central Government funding, the British Library also receives funds from the heritage lottery fund, sponsorship and private donations. [32]

There are six legal deposit libraries that receive free copies of every book published in Briain and Ireland [33] [34], they hold in the region of 50 million books between them including many rare items. As well as the British Library in London, there are five other such legal deposit libraries (holding in the region of 35 million books):The National Library of Scotland Edinburgh (7 million books) [35] , National Library of Wales Aberystwyth, Wales (4 million books) [36], Trinity College Library, Dublin Ireland (4.5 million books) [37], Bodleian Library and University of Oxford Libraries (11 million books) [38] [39] and the Cambridge University Library (7 million books). [40] [41] The National Library of Ireland, a seperate library to Trinity College holds a further 1 million titles and 6 million items. [42] [43]

Whether or not the legal deposit libaries in Britain and Ireland (British Isles) are the biggest in the world is not really the issue, what is important is that they are certainly amongst the most interesting in terms of the many rare collections they hold.

Finally to put things in to perspective, the New York Times reported in 2006 that "From the days of Sumerian clay tablets till now, humans have "published" at least 32 million books, 750 million articles and essays, 25 million songs, 500 million images, 500,000 movies, 3 million videos, TV shows and short films and 100 billion public Web pages. All this material is currently contained in all the libraries and archives of the world". "Scan This Book!" - Kevin Kelly - May 14, 2006 - New York Times. [44] [45] A further estimate suggested that global published books now approached 65 million titles, however it remain difficult to accurately gauge total world wide publication figures. [46]

European National Library Collections can be searched at the European Library Website. [47] [48]

--90.205.89.183 (talk) 11:24, 19 October 2008 (UTC)


The points made here are certainly interesting ones as facts, but in questions of size of the British Library itself, data on the holdings of branch libraries and the national library system of the UK (and whatever else is written about above) are simply irrelevant. I should also point out that built but unused shelf space hardly counts towards book counts or totals.

Moreover, to put these facts in perspective, at least two or three of the major library cities in the U.S. could surpass these resources, especially if you add up both branch libraries and metropolitan university and specialist collections, and if one wants to discuss national consortia, several in the U.S. would overwhelm the figures quoted for the UK here. This is not to say that British holdings of books aren't remarkable, for they surely are, but the sorts of (sometimes patriotic) claims made on this site asserting that the British Library has it all are simply wrong. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ckkgourmet (talk • contribs) 16:41, 21 October 2008 (UTC)


My point being that Library size is not really that relevent, what is more relevant is the quality of a collection, and the Library of Congress is indeed one of the worlds great libraries in this respect. I am also sure London's sister city New York has an equally awe inspiring public library collection, although I doubt any US City would surpass London or Paris [49] [50], which are both home to a large number of universities, a national library, numerous musuems libraries, specialist libraries and very extensive public library provision. Furthermore European Libraries are of impressive scale, indeed the EU estimates that the European libraries hold in total more than 2.5 billion (2,500 million) books and bound periodicals. [51] [52] [[53]] It should also be noted that European Libraries are increasingly accessible, indeed Paris will soon be less than 2 hours by train from London St Pancras Station (directly next door to the British Library) and Brussels may soon be a mere one and half hours. [54] [55]

As for the British Library book space at Boston Spa it is to be filled with low use items now in the process of being moved, clearing the way for more space at the British Library at St Pancras. [56] Invariable National libraries are overrun with low use rubbish, especially legal deposit libraries, as one bemused journalist put it "Couldn't you just lose a few Barbara Cartlands", perhaps the new depository at Boston Spa should be named in Barbara's honour. [57]

I agree that the British Library is not the be all and end all of all mankinds knowledge, nor is the new library at St Pancras particuarly stunning in terms of architecture,[58] with the Victorian St Pancras Station building next door being far more spectacular [59] [60].

The British library's resources at St Pancras in London, are stored underground in basement areas that are kept at a constant temperature and humidity. There are four levels to the underground basement area, each of which takes up a space approximately equivalent to the size of Wembley football pitch. [61] The vast storage space available means that collections can be stored onsite, previously before 1997, when the Library was part of the British Museum, much of the material had to be ordered from storage areas elsewhere. There are also storage facilities at the British Libraries northern site, at Boston Spa site in Yorkshire. [62]

On a positive note, the British Library is becoming far more attune to it's customers needs and this can be clearly seen on it's recently renewed website, with it's main public catalogue now including over 14 million books, as well as historic collections, manuscripts and other important items which number over 150 million. [63]. The area around the libraries St Pancras site is also becoming quite a knowledge hub, with plans for a £500 million medical laboratory to be built near the library, announced last year. [64] [65] [66]

The Library of Congress is a stunning building, and it's collection is extremely large although not as large as many have claimed, it has 20,854,810 cataloged books, the often cited figure of 32 million applying to all books and other print materials rather than exclusively books.[67] It should also be remembered that both the British Library and Library of Congress work together in a common purpose in order to perserve the worlds rarest and most wonderful books, and they are not in some kind of competition with each other.

As for the figures spouted in relation to the British library, I am also unable to fathom out why the Encyclopedia Britannica cites a figure of 25 million books, the only conclusion I can arrive at is that the figure includes the three national deposit libraries of mainland Great Britain (British, Welsh and Scottish) who collectively hold a national collection of over 25 million books. These libraries are not all on one site but then again neither are the books of many national libraries, indeed the Russian National Library houses it's collection in Moscow and St Petersburg, while most large libraries keep millions of low use items in depositories, the Library of Congress has a depository at Ford Meade in Maryland. Furthermore public libraries and university libraries are often spread over many buildings, Harvard has over 80 libraries, the New York public library system is often cited as one of the largest libraries in the world but is spread across New York City. If Britain wanted to have the largest library in the world we could set up a single London Library incorporating the British Library, London Museum and Specialist Libraries and the London Public Libraries. However it is a libraries unique contents rather than mere size that seperates what are deemed the great libraries of the world such as the Library of Congress and British Library from mere book warehouses based solely on size and shelf space.

--90.211.214.89 (talk) 17:02, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

I will admit that there is something to be said for the accessibility of local collections, but I would submit that one author above has vastly underestimated non-European collections of books in a way that I find rather surprising. The university libraries in the U.S., to take an example in reach, are stupendously large, the best being equal in size to most national libraries, to the point of approaching some of them in the quality and quantity of their holdings. One need only think of Harvard and Yale in this regard. Those who cite university libraries around London, and special library collections in that city, are seemingly unaware of the wide variety of university and rare books collections in the United States. New York easily equals London, as does Washington. There seems to be no consciousness here of the resources in those cities apart from their leading institutions. If the conversation here is about available resources, why don't we point out that New York is not only served by the New York Public Library, but the libraries of numerous museums and institutions, all of international note. Why not point out that Yale and Princeton are as close to NY as Cambridge and Oxford are to London, and that within the confines of the city itself there are major libraries and book collections of huge international fame (Columbia, Rockefeller, New York University, the Morgan Library, the Frick, the Watson, MoMA's book collection, Juilliard, one could go on and on). Is it not realized that, to take one exotic example, the Hispanic Society of America, located in Harlem, owns the greatest collection in Spanish and Latin American historical materials outside of Spain?

I'm certainly not claiming that these resources cannot be matched by collections like those of London or Paris, but only pointing out that, whereas posters here are very aware of what's in their backyard, they seem willing to make qualitative judgments about other places despite having inaccurate perceptions of those places' resources.

I should mention that a friend of mine recently went to Tokyo and claims that what they have there is truly estimable, too. It's not London or New York or Washington, but it's something we Westerners overlook all the time when admiring ourselves. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ckkgourmet (talk • contribs) 23:06, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

I was attempting to demonstrate the folly of just relying on numbers in order to determine the quality or standing of a library, and indeed if New York were to include many of it's specialised libraries and it's public library system, it could well claim the title of the largest library in the world, just as London could. However it was you who claimed that certain Library Cities in America could surpass cities in Europe such as London and Paris, something that I strongly refute. New York is indeed one of the worlds great cities, and is a knowledge centre like London and Paris, something that I have no problem in acknowledging. Equally London has major academic resources, the London region being served by the M25 Academic Library Consortium, which allows students access to the 30 million volumes on the consortiums shelves, and doesn't even include the Oxford or Cambridge University libraries who together hold a further 18 million volumes. [68] The Paris region is also home to some 17 Universities including the world famous Sorbonne. In terms of Museum Libraries The Smithsonian holds 1.5 million books and manuscripts [69], a similar number to the Natural History Museum in London [70], and thats without adding other scientific collections such as those held at the Science Museum (London), Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, a designated UN World Heritage Centre or even London's Victoria and Albert Museum.

--90.217.104.80 (talk) 11:46, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

Clearly our discussion has moved wide beyond the original subject, which was the size of the British Library collection. Understanding that you are not simply interested in the relative size of the actual BL, I happily acknowledge your point that the researcher in London has access to much more than the BL itself, and for that reason might perform some of the most sophisticated research possible in the world today. While at first I thought you were simply advancing a BL-largest-library-in-the-world argument under cover of London's city resources, I now see that your actual point is indeed a valid one, and fully agree that the discussion of specific collection size is an outmoded metric. Of course that doesn't mean that Wikipedia thinks it's irrelevant: there will still be those who want to claim that the BL is somehow the biggest collection in the world and what not in order to feel better about themselves.

But since we're off of that specific issue, I did want to continue engaging you, since you are clearly a knowledgeable person in these matters, on the issue of Library Cities, as that's where we've now headed in this discussion. Specifically, I would like a piece of clarification. In your above post, are you actually acknowledging that NY equals London and Paris, or not? I ask because you, on the one hand, accept it as having great library resources, and then, on the other, say that you "strongly refute" that "Library Cities in America could surpass cities in Europe such as London and Paris." Which is it? If the question is whether NY actually surpasses London or Paris, or simply equals them, I am not interested in pursuing that too far. This would be very hard to determine. However, if the question is whether NY even achieves parity, I would reject the claim.

As for other U.S. cities that might be addressed here, Washington itself has yet to be set in the context of the resources of the U.S. capital, including numerous museums and university collections, that would also propel it to the forefront of any list of Library Cities. Perhaps this is simply because there is a certain lack of awareness of Washington's other resources, which are immense. Not only are there world class universities around Washington, universities that many Europeans may be unfamiliar with unless they are academics (Georgetown, Johns Hopkins nearby in Baltimore, the University of Maryland), but there are also extremely rich institutional collections in the city itself, from Dumbarton Oaks (probably the world's preeminent Byzantine and Precolumbian research collections to the enormous resources of the Smithsonian libraries). This is just a sampling, however, of the riches of that city. With the Library of Congress alone, however, I would say that Washington equals/surpasses London and Paris.

As a possible third Library City, one might do worse than proposing Boston, whose public library, though not the BL or BN (or even NYPL), is nothing to sneeze at, and whose university libraries (Harvard to take the largest) are so immense that they surpass most national collections in terms of both rare and new items (is not Harvard Library itself actually the 4th largest library in the world, after all?)

Of course one issue being ignored here is accessibility. If our discussion is about the availability of resources, a thing you yourself raised in one of your posts, then it might be pointed out that U.S. collections are infinitely more accessible, in my experience, than their European counterparts. I realize that this may finally be changing, but research is still much easier in the U.S. than in many parts (or perhaps every part) of Europe. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ckkgourmet (talk • contribs) 12:32, 23 October 2008 (UTC)


Yes I acknowledge that New York is one of the great knowledge centres along with cities such as London and Paris. I would however refute the fact thar New York surpasses London or Paris. In terms of London I think I have already successfully demonstrated the fact that London is so much more than merely the British Library. [71] [72] In terms of Paris it prides itself on it's culture and heritage, many of it's libraries being amongst the grandest and most beautiful in the world, and it's collections of art and cultural objects is second to none.[[73]] [74] Then again each European state has it's own accessible National Library of vast proportions [75] [76] [77] as well as very accessible public and unique academic collections [78] (List of medieval universities), and I am sure cities such as London, Paris, Rome (Vatican Library), Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Geneva, Berlin, Madrid, Moscow etc are also among the worlds great cities of knowledge. Just as I am sure that US cities also hold large and unique collections based around the great US academic and public libraries, with places such as Boston, New York, Washington DC and Chicago famous for their unique and comprehensive collections. As for all things Byzantine, I suspect the Greeks have a rather good collection. [79]

Finally, you talk about the large US Academic Libraries but European Cities also have large academic libraries, the University of London [80] a federal establishment is made up of several smaller institutions (many of them specialist), with a combined book stock in the region of 14 million volumes (including Senate House (University of London)), that's two thirds of the 21 million academic books held in London Universities. [81] The University of Paris was broken up in to numerous smaller and specialist institutions, but collectively they would match the University of London collection, with both London and Paris being home to large national libraries and significant public library systems. Similarly Moscow State University holds over 9 million Volumes, but is only one of a host of universities, libraries and educational institutions in Moscow. Likewise Berlin has an array of Universities and higher education institutions(List of universities, colleges, and research institutions in Berlin) such as the Humboldt University which holds 7 million volumes, the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich holding a further 7 million volumes, the University of Hamburg is also home to a further 7 million volumes, whilst the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University Frankfurt am Main [82] is home to 10 million books. Furthermore each region in German has it's own massive legal deposit library,[83] examples being the Berlin State Library which holds over 10 million volumes and the Bavarian State Library in Munich which holds a further 9 million volumes, as well as the German National Library

The University of Vienna is home to 6.5 million volumes, the University of Geneva a further 5 million volumes [84], with many academic libraries in Europe also being legal deposits such as the University of Lund in Sweden which holds 8.5 million volumes along with the University of Uppsala which holds a further 5.25 million volumes and the Jagiellonian University in Krakow Poland holds a further 6.5 million. [85] Other academic university legal deposits include those already mentioned such as Oxford, Cambidge and Trinity College in Ireland, but there are also many other examples. [86] The Spanish, Italians, Greeks and other southern european countries also have impressive libraries, universities and cultural artefacts. In terms of Eastern Europe there are massive state scientific libraries, national libraries and large university libraries, Ukraine's library system being a good example [87]. Many European Cities are Knowledge and Cultural hubs, and their academic and cultural collections are second to none.

--90.217.104.80 (talk) 12:57, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

Newton Sculpture

Always looks to me like someone sitting on the toilet. Someone ought to provide a toilet roll to the correct scale. 89.242.103.68 (talk) 13:39, 28 February 2009 (UTC)


Fee

Hi there, this page says there is a £10 fee for signing up. I signed up today for free, apparently the £10 fee is only if you lose your card. This is the impression their website seems to give as well. I won't change as I'm new to these things

British Library Lending Division - at Boston Spa

Deserves a mention... Anyone? Rich Farmbrough 22:53 28 June 2006 (GMT).

Boston Spa - remodelled as ‘most advanced in the world’

http://www.worldarchitecturenews.com/index.php?fuseaction=wanappln.projectview&upload_id=10946

HOK have revealed their design for the redevelopment of the British Library’s Boston Spa storage site. The current campus in West Yorkshire contains many ex Ministry of Defence buildings from the Second World War along with miss-matched additions from later decades. HOK’s masterplan proposes “a more distinctive identity for the British Library at Boston Spa, incorporating a clear sense of space with strong design principles reflected in the integration and use of existing landscape.”

Up to 80 percent of the library’s total collection of books and the entirety of its newspaper archive could be held at the completed site. Preservation, storage and expansion have been taken into consideration by integrating innovative physical storage solutions and complex phasing to allow the ongoing work of the British Library to continue uninterrupted as it expands its collection by 12 linear kilometers per annum.

A statement by HOK reads: “The master plan envisions that over the next 75 years some of the world’s largest low oxygen, automated library storage and retrieval facilities will be built at the Boston Spa site, including 40 acres of high-density storage, 8 acres of conventional storage, and new office facilities.

“Once completed the Boston Spa site would be the most advanced in the world and, by 2046, the whole of the Library’s collection would be stored in facilities meeting the BS5454 archival storage standard.”

Green roofs and letter-shaped perforations to facades add to the facility's aesthetic charm. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.217.104.75 (talk) 20:25, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Lawrence Durrell Collection — response to merge tag

The LDC article consists of only a sentence or two. It probably needs expansion. Were it to be merged somewhere instead, wouldn't the natural place be Lawrence Durrell? Personally, I'm against merging articles simply because one is small. A small article invites contribution. Is the LDC topic one that really warrants an article separate from the article on the author? That's a good question. Does it have the potential to stand on its own? Possibly. Does the article on the author have the potential to become "too big" and need splitting? Possibly. Does the creator of the LDC article have an opinion? Because that person probably knows the sources better than casual passers by like me. Good luck with making this decision. Cheers. Friedrich Müller (talk) 17:45, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

Largest library

The most-recent revision says that the reason Guiness states the the BL is smaller than the LOC is the length of the shelves. I find this highly doubtful and we aren't supposed to make assumptions in our articles. (See WP:NPOV.) Further, the introduction omits the very-important fact that the BL has less books. Why someone wouldn't think that this is important is baffling to me. In fact, the number of books, in my opinion, is the most important statistic of all. Thus, I'm adding it back in and reworking the intro again.--HQCentral 10:43, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

On the page about the Library of Congress it says "The Guinness Book of World Records currently lists the Library of Congress as the "Largest Library" [2]. This apparently 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, which uses the metric system, reports about 625 km (or 388 miles) of shelves[4] On the other hand, the Library of Congress holds about 130 million items,[5] as against approximately 150 million items for the British Library.[6]". This is where my information comes from regarding the dispute - it is not an 'assumption' and contradicts the idea the British Library has "less books". The sources also show different ways of defining a 'book'.--81.1.115.179
Come to think of it, you're right. The World Book article says "30 million books, pamphlets, and other printed materials" rather than "30 million books." So, I've changed it back to your version. My mistake.--HQCentral 12:37, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
Thanks - glad we've cleared that up.--81.1.115.179

People who work in libraries often calculate the sum of owned items differently, thus any final comparison between item numbers is suspect. In one collection, for example, files might be counted as single items, whereas in another collection, every part of the file might be numbered individually. For my part, I would guess that book numbers would be the most reliable indication of a library's size, indicating that the LOC is larger than the BL. Surely the huge difference in shelf space inhabited by materials (a measurement favoring the LOC) indicates that something must be taking up space there to the disadvantage of the BL. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.68.84.6 (talk) 04:43, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

First time user and my first contribution to Wikipedia... I notice on the British Library official website it states on the homepage '14 million books'. The Wikipedia article states '25 million books' and cites a 3rd party source - the Encyclopaedia Britannica website. I feel this is a key fact, probably being cited erroneously by school kids, that should naturally be changed. Although comfortable with MediaWiki I am not confident I should be changing this myself, just yet. Hopefully someone more senior here will pick this up and investigate. Many thanks. Captain Scribe (talk) 16:58, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

When Stewart Home was making photocopies of his own work for the National Art Library he always provided them on 100gsm paper rather than 80gsm paper so that the shelf space would be increased by 25% to make his contribution seem more important. I don't know whether he is unique in this, but clearly such conceits could effect certain measures of size.Harrypotter (talk) 00:05, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

National Library?

I have tagged this for citation. The United Kingdom is not a nation. There is a National library for Scotland. See also The National Archive which also has had to deal with some of this confusion.Harrypotter (talk) 21:41, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

Ah, asymmetric devolution... I spent a moment thinking about this opening statement, however per the definition in National library "A national library is a library specifically established by the government of a country to serve as the pre-eminent repository of information for that country", the BL appears to satisfy that criteria. I have also dug up an authoritative citation (Dictionary for library and information science) using this exact definition and will add that to the lead. Fæ (talk) 11:40, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I used to work for the The National Archives who deal with the situation by capitalising "The"! Sorry I forget the final "s" on the link.Harrypotter (talk) 14:45, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

Web archiving activities

The Library's web archiving programme (and the UK web archive) should perhaps be mentioned somewhere: http://www.bl.uk/aboutus/stratpolprog/digi/webarch/index.html . See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_Web_Archiving_Consortium Tomjpollard (talk) 12:22, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Fresh GA nomination

After separate discussion, I have renominated this article for GA review (see /GA2#Tidy up for recent actions). The last review was over eight months ago and timed-out due to a lack of corrective action. With the current interest from a number of editors collaborating at WP:GLAM/BL (the British Library edit-a-thon), I expect that any improvements needed could be resolved within a reasonable time for this primary article.

Previous Good Article reviews are linked in the archive box at the top of this talk page. Fæ (talk) 11:58, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

GA Review

GA toolbox
Reviewing
This review is transcluded from Talk:British Library/GA3. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Tim riley (talk) 10:31, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

I don't think this review will take very long. The article has all the makings of a GA, but before I cut the ribbon there are some points about the prose that need to be addressed:

  • Lead:
    • Memory may be playing tricks, but I think we may elsewhere have agreed to differ about what words it is and isn't appropriate to bluelink. See WP:OVERLINK – I'd lose the lot in the second sentence of the lead, myself, except for "research library".
    • "A significant budget" – a dubious adjective: what does it signify?
      •  Done Slight copy-edit and unlinked common words (such as "book") but left in technical language (like "legal deposit") and place names. Fæ (talk) 12:02, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
  • Historical background
    • "the Document Supply Centre is in Yorkshire" – that is, at Boston Spa? Not clear.
    • George III – bluelinked twice within a few lines: the second link should go.
  • Legal deposit
    • blue link should be at first not second mention in this para.
    • "Chris Mole introduced and passed a Private Member's Bill" – Mr Mole may have introduced it, but it was Parliament that passed it – given that you mention the Act immediately afterwards, I'd lose "and passed".
  • Using the Library's Reading Rooms
  • Material available online
  • Business and IP Centre
    • "The Business & IP Centre is separated into two distinct areas": – it is not at all clear what these two areas are.
    • "It is available for free" – horrible vulgarism – "free of charge", I beg!
    • "You must have a reader pass "– this sudden switch to addressing the reader as "you" is jarring and inappropriate.
    • "A reader's pass": this is the third form in which this phrase has appeared in the article – earlier it is "reader pass" and earlier still it is capitalised.
    • The four bullet points read like a marketing blub rather than an encyclopaedia article – "protect your ideas" and so forth.
      •  Done I agree this was the most blurb-ridden section and I have heavily trimmed based on your comments. It is now consistent with other sections. Fæ (talk) 16:53, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
  • Philatelic Collections
    • "are held at the BL" – first use of the abbreviation – rather late in the article for it to seem natural. I'd say "St Pancras" here, I think.
    • Why does the Head Curator get a name check here when his compeers in departments listed earlier do not?
      • Good point, I think that the head curators (originally they were Keepers in the British Museum library) are notable academics in their own right (an unambiguous case for WP:PROF could be made for each of them and I would strongly support the creation of stand alone BLP articles considering how poorly British academics are represented on :en) and consequently the article would benefit from more of them being named and wiki-linked to (see Category:Employees of the British Library). I think this is an ongoing area for improvement and accept there may be good arguments both ways on inclusion. In this case I believe that Beech is the longest serving curator (at 28 years, c.f. Michelle P. Brown) and so there might be a fair case for keeping his name here on that basis whilst we consider how many others to add articles for, though if you still feel this is a weak rationale I'll take him out on the basis of consistency. Fæ (talk) 16:25, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
Happy with whatever you decide on this. Again, at FAC you might get a hard time, but as I read the GA rules this is by no means a show-stopper. Nor is anything else in my list of quibbles, with the exception of the four bullet points in the Business and IP section, which really don't meet GA/MOS standards. The rest is just fine-tuning. Tim riley (talk) 16:41, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
  • Highlights of the collections
    • Rather a subjective heading, and I reckon you'd have trouble with it at FAC. For present purposes, is there a BL leaflet or some such which you can quote as listing these highlights?
      The BL lists 15 highlights which somewhat overlap the 15 items listed in the article. I would definitely remove the Stein collection from the list of highlights (especially as there is no Wikipedia article specifically on the Stein collection) as this should be a list of notable individual items rather than subcollections. BabelStone (talk) 11:07, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
      •  Done I have trimmed the list based on the 'official' highlight list on the BL website. This may be debatable and I have previously thought about saying more about the 100+ 'Treasures' as identified on the BL smart-phone application. Again this might be an area for improvement rather than needing to be fully resolved for GA. Fæ (talk) 16:37, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
  • Transport connections
    • I love the logos – most appealing to the eye!
  • References
    • I think you need to check the capitalisation of the titles cited at references 1, 2, and 11, to make sure you have fairly reproduced the original capitalisation.
    • Ref 4 incorrectly quotes the page title.
    • Ref 31 needs the URL piping.
  • Further reading
    • "Giles Mandelbrote (Hrsg.)" – showing my ignorance: what do the characters in brackets mean?
      Herausgeber apparently, which means "editor" or "publisher". To my complete surprise there appear to be hundreds of unexplained uses of "Hrsg." or "Herausgeber" in articles on the English Wikipedia. Definitely should be translated to English (ed.). BabelStone (talk) 11:21, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
       Done I have nabbed a version straight from GBooks, it was missing an author anyway. Fæ (talk) 16:43, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Once these points are addressed, I can proceed with the formal review, which I think will be easy from the reviewer's point of view. Tim riley (talk) 10:31, 6 February 2011 (UTC)


Give or take the odd straggler from the above we are there, I think. I am much relieved at the improvements in the Business and IP section, and everything else was of secondary importance. So, reaching for the champagne to break over the bows:

Overall summary

GA review – see WP:WIAGA for criteria

  1. Is it reasonably well written?
    A. Prose quality:
    B. MoS compliance:
  2. Is it factually accurate and verifiable?
    A. References to sources:
    Well referenced
    B. Citation of reliable sources where necessary:
    Well referenced
    C. No original research:
  3. Is it broad in its coverage?
    A. Major aspects:
    B. Focused:
  4. Is it neutral?
    Fair representation without bias:
  5. Is it stable?
    No edit wars, etc:
  6. Does it contain images to illustrate the topic?
    A. Images are copyright tagged, and non-free images have fair use rationales:
    Well illustrated
    B. Images are provided where possible and appropriate, with suitable captions:
    Well illustrated (Wouldn't mind a bit of trimming of some of the lengthier captions.)
  7. Overall:
    Pass or Fail:

Thanks for the quick reply and your efforts in providing a detailed review. I intend to chip away at the comments I have yet to go through for their improvement value rather than for GA status. Cheers Fæ (talk) 20:01, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Finished sweeping up the remainder, let me know if I've missed something or missed the intent of a comment. Thanks Fæ (talk) 21:19, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
Looks good to me. Loud applause! Tim riley (talk) 22:11, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Image request

Could any of you who have access there, perhaps look for letter by Mara Bar-Serapion preserved in a 6th or 7th century manuscript (BL Add. 14658) at the British Library and upload an image? That would look good on his page. Thanks. History2007 (talk) 20:15, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

Construction issues

I am amazed to discover that this article makes no reference at all to the decades of design changes, construction delays and funding wrangles involved in the building of the Euston Road site, as extensively covered in the media in the 1990s before it opened. That needs to be rectified.

Here are some references: a mention in a book about North London architecture, a journal article about the technical challenges of moving the collections, an article about the subterranean engineering of the site in 1982, a piece about the "planning disaster", with references to government reports. — Scott • talk 14:48, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

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Alan Turing Institute

It should be noted that the British Library at St Pancras in London is now in the process of constructing a new data science centre to be known as the Alan Turing Institute on 2.8 acres of land betweeen the Libraries Conservation Centre and the new £650 million Francis Crick Institute.

http://www.theconstructionindex.co.uk/news/view/sophisticated-developer-sought-for-british-library-extension

https://turing.ac.uk/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daNbQu_Q8k4 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.10.195.154 (talk) 13:45, 27 July 2016 (UTC)

This follows the recent investment in a new state of the art newspaper Storage Facility at Boston Spa and investment in Newspaper Reading Rooms which saw the closure of the Colindale Newspaper Building pictured in the current wiki article.

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jul/05/british-library-digitising-newspapers-boston-spa

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/apr/28/british-library-33m-pound-newspaper-reading-room

The British Library also recently became a member of the new Knowledge Quarter, a partnership of 35 academic, cultural, research, scientific and media organisations based in King's Cross, Euston and Bloomsbury.

http://www.bl.uk/press-releases/2014/december/knowledge-quarter-launched-at-the-british-library

http://www.knowledgequarter.london/

Perhaps Wiki editors may be interested in adding some of these developments to the main article.

Clarification required about the size comparison.

The article states that "The Library's collections include around 14 million books[4] (second only to the United States' Library of Congress)". However, Russian State Library has 17.8 mln "books and booklets", according to this page, which RSL's article uses for reference - http://leninka.ru/index.php?doc=2661 (in Russian). I was not able to find the difinition of what the British Library considers to be "books", but can the difinitive statement that it is "second only to the United States' Library of Congress" be altered or removed due to this conflict of information? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.195.122.56 (talk) 19:22, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

This is (and has always been) a problem with library size figures! There is no one standard for what a "book" is, how to count (eg) multi-volume works or multiple works in a single volume, whether to count manuscripts, how to count bound journals, what constitutes a pamphlet versus a book...
The BL's figure (annual report, p.33) is explictly for "monographs" - it doesn't cover serial parts. The RSL is somewhat more vague; what exactly are "брошюры"? Pamphlets? The Russian State Library article glosses it as "over 17 million books and serial volumes", which may give a clue - most individual issues of journals are slim paperbacks before rebinding, and I can easily understand "pamphlet" being used for them.
One other metric is shelf size, which is independent of what's actually in the shelves. The BL report gives a total figure of 677.5km of occupied shelving; the RSL article quotes 275km, which suggests the total collection is noticeably smaller. However, I can't seem to find one for LoC!
Ideally, what we'd want here would be some kind of third party list ranking libraries by size, but (oddly enough) there doesn't seem to be many out there. Andrew Gray (talk) 10:05, 25 September 2012 (UTC)
I agree with all the above: comparative figures are quite meaningless unless based on some agreed common international standard, which as far as I'm aware doesn't exist. (Even shelving lengths aren't reliable, as shelves can be packed in different ways.) Pending the unearthing of any such objective comparative listing, shouldn't we change the description in the lead to "one of the world's largest libraries", and remove the direct comparison with LoC entirely? GrindtXX (talk) 16:58, 25 September 2012 (UTC)
That seems a sensible solution. Fire away! Andrew Gray (talk) 17:39, 25 September 2012 (UTC)
This problem still hasn't been addressed. It is also on the LOC page. I'm going to make an edit. I do agree that these sort of comparisons are pretty meaningless, but at the same time I do think it is the kind of information that users will find useful. If there was a page on the complexities of sizing a library I would link it but I don't think there is one. I will simply note that it is a rather meaningless claim. Curzmg (talk) 19:27, 17 April 2014 (UTC)
I'm very happy with your wording, but we'll have to see whether it lasts. This statement has been edited a number of times, but people like absolute claims, and somebody always seems to change it back. GrindtXX (talk) 21:35, 17 April 2014 (UTC)
One of the conditions of the UK Copyright Act is that a book publisher must supply to the British Library at least one free copy of every new book he/she publishes and as a result the library contains at least one example of every book published in the UK and British Empire for at least the past hundred years, and probably since 1710. The figures for the Library will not count manuscripts, pamphlets, etc, as 'books' because they aren't books. Multi-volume books will be counted as one title. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.145.115.106 (talk) 10:34, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

Largest Library

I understand the difficulty in trying to guage the largest library but the Library's own Wikipedia page states 150 million items. Also, the "Facts and Figures" page states that it has only 150 million items. I understand there is one piece of data that states 170 but that cannot be corroborated, even by it's own website. The British Library website is contradictory on this point. The Library of Congress is consistent in that it is at 158 million items.Petercannon usf (talk) 02:28, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

Petercannon, I am a little confused. You claim, 'I understand the difficulty in trying to guage the largest library but the Library's own Wikipedia page states 150 million items,' but this is only after you changed it. The British Library's website is not at all contradictory. I will quote: 'Our collection of around 170 million items includes some of the most iconic treasures from a variety of cultures...' and 'the collection includes well over 150 million items, in most known languages.' WELL OVER 150 million items. I understand that this comparison seems controversial, but if we are going to have it, and we are going to trust the data taken from the respective institution's websites, then the information on Wikipedia is currently wrong. I am therefore going to change it back. Curzmg (talk) 10:33, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

The British Library has over 180 million items according to it's own website.

http://support.bl.uk/page/conservation — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:C7D:2179:C500:89F2:F24F:E47C:C178 (talk) 20:26, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

What was the library called before 1973?

What is the correct name for the predecessor of the British Library before 1973, when it was part of the British Museum? Was it the British Museum Library, which is now a different library?

I came here from Gwen Raverat, which says that one of her books "was accessioned at the British Library in May 1915", which looks wrong. There is a similar issue in National library, which says "Anthony Panizzi became the Principal Librarian at the British Library in 1856". Verbcatcher (talk) 01:43, 12 March 2017 (UTC)

As far as I know it was indeed the British Museum Library, a department of the British Museum (though whether "Library" should be capitalised or not seems a bit moot, and, e.g., the article on Anthony Panizzi is inconsistent). I don't think there's a British Museum Library as such now, but rather multiple small departmental libraries: see here. The Paul Hamlyn Library, which was housed in the old reading room from 2000 to 2007, and later elsewhere, closed permanently in 2011, according to British Museum Reading Room. GrindtXX (talk) 21:32, 13 March 2017 (UTC)
It did - so sad! Oldie mentions should really say "at the British Museum (now British Library)" etc. Why we are bothering to say "was accessioned at the British Library in May 1915", I've no idea. It was/is a Copyright library, to which publishers were legally required to send a copy. Johnbod (talk) 04:55, 14 March 2017 (UTC)
I have now corrected both those articles (Gwen Raverat and National library). In the context of the Raverat article, the precise date of accessioning is considered significant, which is why it's highlighted there. GrindtXX (talk) 14:01, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

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