Description of the attraction
The British Library is the national library of Great Britain. It is based in London and has an archive and reading room in Boston Spa, West Yorkshire. It is the largest library in the world in terms of the number of storage units - over 150 million.
The British Library was established on July 1, 1973, before that it was part of the British Museum. In 1983, the National Archives of Sound Recordings was transferred to the library - more than a million discs and thousands of tapes.
The core of the library consists of the collections that formed its foundation: the library of Sir Hans Sloan, the founder of the British Museum, Sir Robert Cotton, Robert Harley and King George III. Together with the collection of the Royal Library, the British Library inherited the right to obtain a legal copy of every book printed in the country.
Over the years, the library's collections have been stored in various locations, both in London and beyond, and it was only in 1997 that everything was collected in a new purpose-built building on Euston Road.
Anyone who needs to use the funds and services of the library can get a library card. To do this, you need to provide a permanent address of residence and a sample signature. Some of the medieval books have been digitized and available online, including the famous 7th century Gospel of Lindisfarne.
The library's holdings include not only books and magazines, but also newspapers, postage stamps, an immense audio archive, manuscripts, maps and much more. The most famous books from the collection of the British Library: The Diamond Sutra - the world's earliest dated printed book; Gospel of Lindisfarne of the 7th century; two Gutenberg Bibles; two copies of Magna Carta (Magna Carta) 1215; the only surviving manuscript copy of the medieval poem Beowulf; notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci; Gospel Belonging to Anne Boleyn.
