British Library

The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom and is the world's largest research library, holding over 150 million items and adding some 3 million every year. As of March 2004 the library holds 11.2 million monographs and receives more than 41,500 serials.

Access to the collections

A number of important works are on display to the general public in a gallery called "Treasures of the British Library" which is open to the public seven days a week at no charge. There is an additional exhibition concerned with practical matters connected with the library's collection, such as printing and early sound recording. The Library also stages temporary exhibitions on a wide range of subjects which can be illuminated by the items in its collection - which is almost anything, not just literature. There is a charge for these temporary exhibitions.

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Other items can be accessed in the Reading Rooms. In the past the Library emphasised its role as a "library of last resort" for people who needed access to deep and specialised collections which they could not find anywhere else. Nowadays it adopts a more welcoming approach and emphasises on its website that anyone who wishes to carry out research is likely to be granted a reader's pass, providing they furnish the necessary identification for security purposes. The Library has come under criticism for admitting undergraduate students to the Reading Rooms, but the Library says that they have always admitted undergraduates as long as they have a legitimate personal, work-related or academic research purpose.

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According to the website, more than half a million people use the Library's reading rooms every year. The huge reading rooms cover thousands of seats which are filled with researchers every day. According to the May 2005 Readers' Bulletin, usage of the Reading Rooms had gone up significantly in the last month or so - 2005 room usage has been the highest it has been for quite a few years. This is putting pressure on services including causing difficulty for readers using the cloakroom and locker facilities.

Related Topics:
May 2005 - 2005

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