The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom. Its building at St Pancras was the largest public building constructed in the UK in the 20th century.
The library is a major research library, holding over 150 million items from many countries, in many languages and in many formats, both print and digital: books, manuscripts, journals, newspapers, magazines, sound and music recordings, videos, play-scripts, patents, databases, maps, stamps, prints, drawings. The Library's collections include around 14 million books, along with substantial holdings of manuscripts and historical items dating back as far as 2000 BC. The British Library is one of the two largest libraries in the world, the other being the Library of Congress of the United States.
The library was originally a department of the British Museum and from the mid-19th century occupied the famous circular British Museum Reading Room. It became legally separate in 1973, and by 1997 had moved into its new purpose-built building at St Pancras, London.
The basements extend to a depth of 24.5 metres and the building has 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 Library is open to everyone who has a genuine need to use its collections. Anyone with a permanent address who wishes to carry out research can apply for a Reader Pass; they are required to provide proof of signature and address for security purposes.
Historically, only those wishing to use specialised material unavailable in other public or academic libraries would be given a Reader Pass.
The large reading rooms offer hundreds of seats which are often filled with researchers, especially during the Easter and summer holidays.
As a legal deposit library, the British Library receives copies of all books produced in the United Kingdom and Ireland, including a significant proportion of overseas titles distributed in the UK. The Library adds some three million items every year occupying 9.6 kilometres of new shelf space.
