| The British Library |
| The British Library came into existence in 1973 as a result of the British Library Act. | Párr. 1 |
| Parliament’s vision was for a single institution at the heart of the UK’s information network, |
| which would aid scientific and technological research, business, the arts and humanities. To |
| make this happen, several organisations were brought together to create a national library. |
| 5 | The British Museum Library, founded in 1753, contained one of the world’s largest |
| collections of books, manuscripts and periodicals, both contemporary and antique, British |
| and foreign. It was created as ‘one general repository’ to hold the collections of Sir Hans |
| Sloane, Sir Robert Cotton and Robert and Edward Harley. When it inherited the library |
| of George III in 1823, its printed books doubled in number, prompting a move to the site of |
| 10 | the current British Museum. |
| Opening in 1857, the Library’s Round Reading Room – with its magnificent domed | Párr. 2 |
| roof – became an iconic destination in the literary landscape of London. George Gissing used |
| the Library’s Round Reading Room as the setting of his 1891 novel New Grub Street, |
| describing it as ‘the valley of the shadow of books’, while lamenting the difficulties of |
| 15 | obtaining a Reader ticket. Its roof was also used in the climax of Alfred Hitchcock’s |
| film Blackmail (1929). The room welcomed many famous visitors including Charles Darwin, |
| Charles Dickens, Karl Marx, George Bernard Shaw and Virginia Woolf. Lenin too applied |
| for a Reader ticket, adopting the pseudonym Jacob Richter to cover his tracks from the |
| Russian authorities. During World War II, some of the library’s most precious treasures were |
| 20 | moved to a secure cave in Aberystwyth, with round the clock guards. Meanwhile, the |
| Newspaper Library in Colindale suffered substantial damage from bombing and some of the |
| collection had to be transferred to quarries in Wiltshire while repairs were made. |
| In 1961, the National Lending Library for Science and Technology became the first | Párr. 3 |
| organisation to operate in what would become the Boston Spa site. Formerly based in |
| 25 | Woolwich under the National Central Library (established in 1916), the team supported |
| lending to libraries and other research institutions, similar to the On Demand service today. |
| Boston Spa also became home to the library’s legal deposit, receiving a copy of every work |
| published in the UK. Today, the Boston Spa site continues to grow. The Reading Room was |
| refurbished in 2014, and one year later, the National Newspaper Building, which uses robotic |
| 30 | cranes to retrieve newspapers, was completed. |
| One of the first challenges for the new British Library in 1973 was to find a site to | Párr. 4 |
| bring together these disparate collections and institutions. An old rail goods yard in St |
| Pancras would become our home. Opening its doors to the public in November 1997 and |
| receiving an official inauguration by HM Queen Elizabeth II the following June, the Library |
| 35 | became the largest public building constructed in Britain in the last 100 years. Although its |
| modernist design by architect Sir Colin St. John Wilson originally divided critics, the |
| building achieved Grade 1 listed status in 2015. Today it lies at the centre of an area of huge |
| regeneration, home to the Knowledge Quarter and Google. |
| The British Library has become one of greatest libraries in the world. Its physical | Párr. 5 |
| 40 | collections are growing all the time and so are its digital collections, which include Digitised |
| Manuscripts, the UK Web Archive and over 1 million rights-free images available on Flickr. |
| With a lively events and exhibitions programme, free business advice and plenty of places to |
| meet, eat, drink and shop, the Library welcomes 1.6 million visitors though its doors every |
| year. |
| 45 | | |
| Fuente: British Library (10 de marzo de 2021). History of the British Library. | |
| https://www.bl.uk/about-us/our-story/history-of-the-british-library# | |