The British Library: Photos and Amazing Facts to Know

Quote of the day: 

A library, to modify the famous metaphor of Socrates, should be the delivery room for the birth of ideas - a place where history comes to life. -Norman Cousins

Returning for its eleventh year, the 2017 London Literature Festival will explore how literature and poetry can remind us of our shared humanity in a world on the edge. The festival will hold from 13-29 October 2017, opening with the 50th anniversary of Poetry International. It is certainly one to check out if you are in the city and around the Southbank Centre.

Now in view of the upcoming festival here is a look at a well known and important library in Britain. The British Library is the national library of the U.K., and it is the second largest library in the world by the total number of items catalogued -over 150 million (The Library of Congress, US, has 162 million making it the largest in the world), including items such as books, maps, prints, stamps, drawings, videos, patents and more from all around the world both print and digital. The library's collection includes over 14 million books. In what is known as foundation collections, the core of the library's historical collections is based on sets of donations and major acquisitions from the 18th century.

The British Library has many rooms including two that were converted into the Business & IP Centre and which is said to hold arguably the most comprehensive collection of business and intellectual property (IP) material in the U.K.


Fun Facts 

1. The British Library is a legal deposit library and receives copies of all books published in the U.K and Ireland, including a proportion of overseas titles distributed in the U.K.

2. The library has two sites, the major one in London (St.Pancras) and the other in West Yorkshire (Boston Spa). The library in West Yorkshire has over 100 km of shelving that houses collections devoted to inter-library loan.

3. The London site was opened in 1998, it was the largest U.K Public building project of the 20th Century with its design and construction taking 37 years to complete and is said to be the pinnacle of architect Sir Colin St John Wilson's career.

4. Ten million bricks and 180,000 tonnes of concrete were used in its construction, and mirrors the red brick exterior of nearby St Pancras Station -with the bricks coming from the same source in Leicestershire.

5. It holds 310,000 manuscript volumes - from Jane Austen to James Joyce, Handel to the Beatles. And has over 60 million patents.

6. There are over 3 million new items which are added each year, and with existing collections all of it requires over 625 km of shelves, growing by about 12 km every year.

7. The collections are spread over 14 gigantic floors -nine above ground and five below ground level, with the the basements extending to a depth of 24.5 metres.

8. If you see five items each day, it would take you over 80,000 years to see the entire collection held.

9. The space outside the library includes pieces of public art, including a large sculpture by Eduardo Paolozzi -a bronze statue based on William Blake's study of Isaac Newton.


More facts about the British Library can be found here.


Have you ever visited any large library in your location? And do library buildings fascinate you?

Thanks for visiting and commenting!


Peace. Love. Light* 



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