25 - The British Library and its antecedents

Summary

Introduction

The British Library, the national library of the United Kingdom, is one of the world's greatest libraries. It was formed comparatively recently, in 1973, when a number of existing organisations were administratively combined by the British Library Act of 1972, but its history dates back over 250 years to the foundation of the British Museum in 1753. The British Library collection, inherited from the former library departments of the British Museum and elsewhere, has been much augmented in the past thirty years and now contains more than 150 million items, in over 400 languages, with a further 3 million items added every year. Many of these additions arrive through the privilege of legal deposit, also inherited from the British Museum, whereby the British Library receives one copy of almost every printed item published in the United Kingdom and Ireland, but significant numbers are acquired through purchase, donation or voluntary deposit arrangements. The collection is as diverse as it is large and includes books, manuscripts, maps, music, newspapers, prints and drawings, photographs, patents, sound recordings, stamps and philatelic items, electronic publications and websites. The oldest items – oracle bones that carry the earliest surviving Chinese writing – are about 3,500 years old. Among the Library's greatest treasures are two versions of Magna Carta, regarded by many as the foundation of civil liberties; the Lindisfarne Gospels, a magnificent example of Anglo-Saxon artistry; the Diamond Sutra, the world's earliest dated printed document; and the Gutenberg Bible, the first major book printed in Europe from movable type.