The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom. It is located London, and its branch archive and reading room are located in the town of Boston Spa in West Yorkshire. It is the largest library in the world by number of items, with over 150 million items.
The British Library was established on 1 July 1973, prior to which it was part of the British Museum. In 1983, the library was given the National Archive of Recorded Sound National Archive of Sound Recordings - over a million discs and thousands of tapes.
The core of the library is made up of those collections that formed the basis of the library: Sir Hans Sloan's library, 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 receive a compulsory copy of every book printed in the country.
Over the years, the Library's holdings have been stored in various locations, both in London and further afield, and it was not until 1997 that everything was brought together in a newly purpose-built building on Euston Road.
A library card can be obtained by anyone who has a need to to use the library's collections and services. To do this you need to provide a permanent residential address and a specimen signature. Some of the medieval books have been digitised and are available online, including the famous Lindisfarne Gospel of the 7th century.
The library's holdings include not only books and magazines, but also newspapers, postage stamps, a grand audio archive, manuscripts, maps and much more. The most famous books in the British Library's collection are the Diamond Sutra, the world's earliest dated printed book; the seventh-century Lindisfarne Gospel; two Gutenberg Bibles; two copies of the Magna Carta of 1215; the only surviving manuscript copy of the medieval poem Beowulf; Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks; a Gospel that belonged to Anne Boleyn.
