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.

Newspapers

The British Library Newspapers section has a similar structure to the main Library but runs largely independently. The Library has a more or less complete collection of British and Irish newspapers since 1840, owing in part to legal deposit legislation of 1869 mandating that the library receive a copy of each edition of a newspaper. London editions of national daily and Sunday newspapers are complete back to 1801. In total the collection consists of 660,000 bound volumes and 370,000 reels of microfilm containing tens of millions of newspapers with 52,000 titles on 45km of shelves.

Related Topics:
1840 - 1869 - Newspaper - London - 1801 - Microfilm

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A collection of particular interest is the Thomason Tracts, containing 7,200 seventeenth century newspapers, and the Burney Collection featuring newspapers from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

Related Topics:
Thomason Tracts - Seventeenth century - Burney Collection - Eighteenth - Nineteenth

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The section also has extensive records of non-British newspapers in Roman and Cyrillic alphabets. The collection is less substantial for Middle Eastern and Oriental alphabets, though some holdings of these are held at the main library in St. Pancras.

Related Topics:
British - Roman - Cyrillic - Middle Eastern - Oriental alphabets - St. Pancras

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British Library Newspapers is open to the public and is located in Colindale in North London.

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