British Library

The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom. The library is a major research library, holding around 170 million items from many countries, in many languages and in many formats, both print and digital: books, manuscripts, journals, newspapers, magazines, sound and music recordings, videos, play-scripts, patents, databases, maps, stamps, prints, drawings. The Library's collections include around 14 million books, along with substantial holdings of manuscripts and historical items dating back as far as 2000 BC.

The British Library is the largest library in the world by number of items catalogued. As a legal deposit library, the British Library receives copies of all books produced in the United Kingdom and Ireland, including a significant proportion of overseas titles distributed in the UK. It also has a programme for content acquisitions. The British Library adds some three million items every year occupying of new shelf space.

The library is a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. It is located on the north side of Euston Road in Somers Town, London (between Euston railway station and St Pancras railway station) and has a document storage centre and reading room near Boston Spa, east of Wetherby in West Yorkshire. Part of the library was originally a department of the British Museum and from the mid-19th century occupied the famous round reading room. It became legally separate in 1973, and by 1997 had moved into its new purpose-built building at St Pancras, London.