What goes on at the British Library

Q. What is the British Library

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Q. What's its history

A. When the British Museum was founded it had three departments: the Department of Natural and Artificial Productions, which developed in due course into the antiquities departments of the British Museum and the Natural History Museum in South Kensington; and the Departments of Manuscripts and of Printed Books. The latter two, the most important parts of the original British Museum, eventually grew into the largest library in Great Britain -�the British Library.

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Q. When did all this take place

A. The great period of expansion began in 1837 when Sir Frederic Madden became Keeper of Manuscripts and Antonio Panizzi Keeper of Printed Books. Madden introduced a new, improved cataloguing system, and brought in new methods of conservation of manuscripts� - as well as adopting a vigorous acquisitions policy. Panizzi organised the move of the bulk of the printed books from Montagu House in Bloomsbury, London, which had accommodated the Museum since 1753, to the new building which was erected in its garden between 1823 and the late 1840s.

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Panizzi also improved the cataloguing system in his department, and his other great achievements were to secure a much larger purchase grant, to enforce the law requiring the deposit in the museum of a copy of every book and other printed matter, including newspapers, published in the United Kingdom - still in force today - and to supervise the building of the great circular Reading Room, surrounded by iron book stacks, which was constructed between 1853 and 1857.

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Q. Are newspapers still kept with the other collections

A. No. By the late 19th century overcrowding became acute at the Library, and the British Museum Newspaper Repository at Colindale, north London, eight miles north-west of the main site, was opened in 1905.

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Q. Wasn't there damage to the collections during the Second World War

A. During the 1939-45 war, bombing destroyed about 225,000 volumes in the British Museum building and 30,000 volumes of newspapers were destroyed or damaged at Colindale. However, large numbers of valuable books and manuscripts were evacuated from the London area to keep them safe.

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Q. When were the plans laid down for the library to move out of the British Museum site

A. The burned-out book stack in the British Museum building had been rebuilt by 1954, but the need for a completely new building for the library became acute by the 1960s, when it became necessary to outhouse material at Woolwich and elsewhere in London. Plans to build on a site to the south of the British Museum were blocked by the government on conservation grounds, but eventually, in 1983, work began on the present building adjoining St Pancras railway station on the Marylebone Road, London.

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Q. When did the Library stop being a department of the Museum and actually become the British Library

A. After an enquiry chaired by Dr (later Lord) Dainton into the national library system, between 1967 and 1969. The British Library was set up in 1973.

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Q. What's in it

A. The present institution includes the three library departments formerly at the British Museum - Printed Books, Manuscripts and Oriental Printed Books and Manuscripts - the National Reference Library of Science and Invention (which had been developed from the Patent Office Library after its incorporation into the British Museum in 1966) and, since 1974, the Office of Scientific and Technical Information of the Department of Education and Science, the Library Association Library and the British National Bibliography.

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A Lending Division is located at Boston Spa in Yorkshire, formed from the National Central Library, which dates back to 1916, and the National Lending Library for Science and Technology, set up in 1962. In 1982 the India Office Library and Records was transferred from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to the British Library, and so were the binderies hitherto run by Her Majesty's Stationery Office in the British Museum building and at Colindale.

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The British Institute of Recorded Sound, founded in the early 1950s, was incorporated in the British Library in 1983 and renamed the National Sound Archive.

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For more detailed information on collections and resources at the British Library go to http://www.bl.uk/

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For more on Arts & Literature click here

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By Simon Smith