The Percy Folio is a folio book of English ballads used by Thomas Percy to compile his Reliques of Ancient Poetry . Although the manuscript itself was compiled in the 17th century, some of its material goes back well into the 12th century. It was the most important of the source documents used by Francis James Child for his 1883 collection The English and Scottish Popular Ballads .
91-427: Those who owned the manuscript before Percy did not treat it well; its owners had probably regarded its Middle English and border dialect as incomprehensible and worthless. When Percy first came across the manuscript, in the house of its former owner Sir Humphrey Pitt of Shifnal, pages were being used by his housemaids to start fires. Percy had the manuscript bound, and the bookbinder inflicted additional damage in trimming
182-936: 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 United Kingdom. The Library is a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport . The British Library is a major research library , with items 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 items dating as far back as 2000 BC. The library maintains
273-400: A Reader Pass. The Library has been criticised for admitting numbers of undergraduate students, who have access to their own university libraries, to the reading rooms. The Library replied that it has always admitted undergraduates as long as they have a legitimate personal, work-related or academic research purpose. The majority of catalogue entries can be found on Explore the British Library,
364-841: A complete catalogue entry of a book to any publisher who sends a final draft or some form of galley proof of a book currently in production. Other national libraries offer similar services or enforce mandatory practices similar to this. The second part of the goal is achieved by thorough acquisition programs and collection development policies which target book markets in other nations, and which foster international agreements with other countries with national libraries who have national bibliographic control as one of their goals. Exchange and access protocols are defined permitting these countries to read each other's catalogues, and to standardize catalogue entries, thus making it easier for each national library to become aware of every possible published document which might concern their country. Another one of
455-727: A daily shuttle service. Construction work on the Additional Storage Building was completed in 2013 and the newspaper library at Colindale closed on 8 November 2013. The collection has now been split between the St Pancras and Boston Spa sites. The British Library Document Supply Service (BLDSS) and the Library's Document Supply Collection is based on the same site in Boston Spa. Collections housed in Yorkshire, comprising low-use material and
546-648: A free copy within one year of publication. The international nature of the book publishing industry ensures that all significant English language publications from elsewhere in the world are also included. In the Republic of Ireland, the Copyright and Related Rights Act 2000 specifies that one copy of every book published is to be delivered to the National Library of Ireland , the Trinity College Library, Dublin,
637-656: A handful of exhibition-style items in a proprietary format, such as the Lindisfarne Gospels . This includes the facility to "turn the virtual pages" of a few documents, such as Leonardo da Vinci 's notebooks. Catalogue entries for many of the illuminated manuscript collections are available online, with selected images of pages or miniatures from a growing number of them, and there is a database of significant bookbindings . British Library Sounds provides free online access to over 60,000 sound recordings. The British Library's commercial secure electronic delivery service
728-468: A million discs and 185,000 tapes. The collections come from all over the world and cover the entire range of recorded sound, from music, drama and literature to oral history and wildlife sounds, stretching back over more than 100 years. The Sound Archive's online catalogue is updated daily. It is possible to listen to recordings from the collection in selected Reading Rooms in the Library through their SoundServer and Listening and Viewing Service , which
819-603: A programme for content acquisition and adds some three million items each year occupying 9.6 kilometres (6 mi) of new shelf space. Prior to 1973, the Library was part of the British Museum , also in the Borough of Camden . The Library's modern purpose-built building stands next to St Pancras station on Euston Road in Somers Town , on the site of a former goods yard. There is an additional storage building and reading room in
910-503: A proper and speedy deposit, such as a tie-in with laws affecting copyright of the same documents, and/or a cataloguing-in-publication (CIP) service. Approximately three million new English-language books are retained by the British Library and Library of Congress each year. One of the main goals of a national library is fulfilling their nation's part of the common international goal of universal bibliographic control , by ensuring
1001-586: A room devoted solely to Magna Carta , as well as several Qur'ans and Asian items. In addition to the permanent exhibition, there are frequent thematic exhibitions which have covered maps, sacred texts, history of the English language, and law, including a celebration of the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta . In May 2005, the British Library received a grant of £1 million from the London Development Agency to change two of its reading rooms into
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#17328476437931092-591: A secure network in constant communication automatically replicate, self-check, and repair data. A complete crawl of every .uk domain (and other TLDs with UK based server GeoIP ) has been added annually to the DLS since 2013, which also contains all of the Internet Archive 's 1996–2013 .uk collection. The policy and system is based on that of the Bibliothèque nationale de France , which has crawled (via IA until 2010)
1183-667: A shared technical infrastructure implementing the Digital Library System developed by the British Library. The DLS was in anticipation of the Legal Deposit Libraries (Non-Print Works) Regulations 2013, an extension of the Legal Deposit Libraries Act 2003 to include non-print electronic publications from 6 April 2013. Four storage nodes, located in London, Boston Spa , Aberystwyth , and Edinburgh , linked via
1274-472: Is a large piazza that includes pieces of public art , such as large sculptures by Eduardo Paolozzi (a bronze statue based on William Blake 's study of Isaac Newton ) and Antony Gormley . It is the largest public building constructed in the United Kingdom in the 20th century. In the middle of the building is a six-storey glass tower inspired by a similar structure in the Beinecke Library , containing
1365-430: Is a service of The Conference of European National Librarians (CENL). The first national libraries had their origins in the royal collections of the sovereign or some other supreme body of the state. One of the first plans for a national library was devised by the English mathematician John Dee , who in 1556 presented Mary I of England with a visionary plan for the preservation of old books, manuscripts and records and
1456-492: Is available in hard copy and via online databases. Staff are trained to guide small and medium enterprises (SME) and entrepreneurs to use the full range of resources. In 2018, a Human Lending Library service was established in the Business & IP Centre, allowing social entrepreneurs to receive an hour's mentoring from a high-profile business professional. This service is run in partnership with Expert Impact. Stephen Fear
1547-675: Is based in the Rare Books & Music Reading Room. In 2006, the Library launched a new online resource, British Library Sounds , which makes 50,000 of the Sound Archive's recordings available online. Launched in October 2012, the British Library's moving image services provide access to nearly a million sound and moving image items onsite, supported by data for over 20 million sound and moving image recordings. The three services, which for copyright reasons can only be accessed from terminals within
1638-439: Is free of charge in hard copy and online via approximately 30 subscription databases. Registered readers can access the collection and the databases. There are over 50 million patent specifications from 40 countries in a collection dating back to 1855. The collection also includes official gazettes on patents, trade marks and Registered Design ; law reports and other material on litigation ; and information on copyright . This
1729-620: Is that library which has the duty of collecting and preserving the literature of the nation within and outside the country. Thus, national libraries are those libraries whose community is the nation at large. Examples include the British Library in London, and the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris. There are wider definitions of a national library, putting less emphasis to the repository character. National libraries are usually notable for their size, compared to that of other libraries in
1820-582: Is the only one that must automatically receive a copy of every item published in Britain; the others are entitled to these items, but must specifically request them from the publisher after learning that they have been or are about to be published, a task done centrally by the Agency for the Legal Deposit Libraries . Further, under the terms of Irish copyright law (most recently the Copyright and Related Rights Act 2000),
1911-597: The Bibliothèque Mazarine , which evolved from its origin as a royal library founded at the Louvre Palace by Charles V in 1368. At the death of Charles VI , this first collection was unilaterally bought by the English regent of France, the Duke of Bedford , who transferred it to England in 1424. It was apparently dispersed at his death in 1435. The invention of printing resulted in the starting of another collection in
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#17328476437932002-547: The .fr domain annually (62 TBs in 2015) since 2006. On 28 October 2023 the British Library's entire website went down due to a cyber attack, later confirmed as a ransomware attack attributed to ransomware group Rhysida . Catalogues and ordering systems were affected, rendering the great majority of the library's collections inaccessible to readers. The library released statements saying that their services would be disrupted for several weeks, with some disruption expected to persist for several months. As at January 2024,
2093-551: The Dissolution of the Monasteries , many priceless and ancient manuscripts that had belonged to the monastic libraries began to be disseminated among various owners, many of whom were unaware of the cultural value of the manuscripts. Sir Robert's genius was in finding, purchasing and preserving these ancient documents. After his death his grandson donated the library to the nation as its first national library. This transfer established
2184-535: The HMSO Binderies became British Library responsibilities. In 1983, the Library absorbed the National Sound Archive , which holds many sound and video recordings, with over a million discs and thousands of tapes. The core of the Library's historical collections is based on a series of donations and acquisitions from the 18th century. These are known as the "foundation collections", and they include
2275-458: The King's Library with 65,000 printed volumes along with other pamphlets, manuscripts and maps collected by King George III between 1763 and 1820. In December 2009 a new storage building at Boston Spa was opened by Rosie Winterton . The new facility, costing £26 million, has a capacity for seven million items, stored in more than 140,000 bar-coded containers and which are retrieved by robots from
2366-634: The National Library Board at their own expense within four weeks from the publication date. Other countries, like the United States, do not follow this requirement. The United States does, however, require that any publisher submit two copies of a copyrightable work to United States Copyright Office at the Library of Congress – this is known as mandatory deposit – but the Library is selective about which works it retains. The international nature of
2457-735: The National Library and Archives of Québec . Since 1537, all works published in France must be deposited with the Bibliothèque nationale de France . Since 1997, it has also received deposits of digital works. Since 1661, the Swedish Royal Library has been entitled to a copy of all works published in Sweden. In Singapore , the National Library Board Act requires all publishers in Singapore to deposit two copies of every publication to
2548-542: The Real Biblioteca by Manuel Antonio Flórez , the Viceroy of New Granada . In the newly formed American republic, James Madison first proposed instituting a congressional library in 1783. The Library of Congress was established on 24 April 1800, when president John Adams signed an act of Congress providing for the transfer of the seat of government from Philadelphia to the new capital city of Washington. Part of
2639-563: The Sejm of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth granted the Library the right to receive a free legal deposit copy of every book printed in the country. Following the failed Kościuszko Uprising , on the eve of Third Partition of Poland and the collapse of Polish statehood, the Library of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth was closed down and taken to St Petersburg in 1794, on the decision of Empress Catherine II , where it formed
2730-469: The bibliographic control of all the books or book-like documents published in that particular country or talking about that particular country, in any way. The first part of the goal is usually achieved through the means of legal deposit laws or (as is the case of the United States) by a host of different programs such as a cataloguing in publication service. By this service, the Library of Congress gives
2821-792: The radical phase of the French Revolution when the private libraries of aristocrats and clergymen were seized. After the establishment of the French First Republic in September 1792, "the Assembly declared the Bibliotheque du Roi to be national property and the institution was renamed the Bibliothèque Nationale . After four centuries of control by the Crown, this great library now became
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2912-399: The 162.7 miles of temperature and humidity-controlled storage space. On Friday, 5 April 2013, the Library announced that it would begin saving all sites with the suffix .uk in a bid to preserve the nation's " digital memory " (which as of then amounted to about 4.8 million sites containing 1 billion web pages). The Library would make all the material publicly available to users by
3003-507: The 18th and 19th centuries were made available online as the British Newspaper Archive . The project planned to scan up to 40 million pages over the next 10 years. The archive is free to search, but there is a charge for accessing the pages themselves. As of 2022, Explore the British Library is the latest iteration of the online catalogue. It contains nearly 57 million records and may be used to search, view and order items from
3094-866: The British Library continued to experience technology outages as a result of the cyber-attack. A number of books and manuscripts are on display to the public in the Sir John Ritblat Gallery which is open seven days a week at no charge. Some manuscripts in the exhibition include Beowulf , the Lindisfarne Gospels and St Cuthbert Gospel , a Gutenberg Bible , Geoffrey Chaucer 's Canterbury Tales , Thomas Malory 's Le Morte d'Arthur ( King Arthur ), Captain Cook 's journal, Jane Austen 's History of England , Charlotte Brontë 's Jane Eyre , Lewis Carroll 's Alice's Adventures Under Ground , Rudyard Kipling 's Just So Stories , Charles Dickens 's Nicholas Nickleby , Virginia Woolf 's Mrs Dalloway and
3185-691: The British Library is entitled to automatically receive a free copy of every book published in Ireland, alongside the National Library of Ireland , Trinity College Library in Dublin, the library of the University of Limerick , the library of Dublin City University and the libraries of the four constituent universities of the National University of Ireland . The Bodleian Library, Cambridge University Library, and
3276-409: The British Library must cover a percentage of its operating costs, a fee is charged to the user. However, this service is no longer profitable and has led to a series of restructures to try to prevent further losses. When Google Books started, the British Library signed an agreement with Microsoft to digitise a number of books from the British Library for its Live Search Books project. This material
3367-479: The British Library required demolition of an integral part of Bloomsbury – a seven-acre swathe of streets immediately in front of the Museum, so that the Library could be situated directly opposite. After a long and hard-fought campaign led by Dr George Wagner, this decision was overturned and the library was instead constructed by John Laing plc on a site at Euston Road next to St Pancras railway station . Following
3458-528: The Business & IP Centre. The centre was opened in March 2006. It holds arguably the most comprehensive collection of business and intellectual property (IP) material in the United Kingdom and is the official library of the UK Intellectual Property Office . The collection is divided up into four main information areas: market research , company information, trade directories, and journals . It
3549-519: The Document Supply Collection are held electronically and can be downloaded immediately. The collection supports research and development in UK, overseas and international industry, particularly in the pharmaceutical industry . BLDSS also provides material to Higher Education institutions, students and staff and members of the public, who can order items through their Public Library or through
3640-478: The Library announced that it would be moving low-use items to a new storage facility in Boston Spa in Yorkshire and that it planned to close the newspaper library at Colindale, ahead of a later move to a similar facility on the same site. From January 2009 to April 2012 over 200 km of material was moved to the Additional Storage Building and is now delivered to British Library Reading Rooms in London on request by
3731-505: The Library's BL Document Supply Service (BLDSS). The Document Supply Service also offers Find it For Me and Get it For Me services which assist researchers in accessing hard-to-find material. In April 2013, BLDSS launched its new online ordering and tracking system, which enables customers to search available items, view detailed availability, pricing and delivery time information, place and track orders, and manage account preferences online. The British Library Sound Archive holds more than
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3822-546: The Library's main catalogue, which is based on Primo. Other collections have their own catalogues, such as western manuscripts. The large reading rooms offer hundreds of seats which are often filled with researchers, especially during the Easter and summer holidays. British Library Reader Pass holders are also able to view the Document Supply Collection in the Reading Room at the Library's site in Boston Spa in Yorkshire as well as
3913-509: The Louvre inherited by Louis XI in 1461. Francis I transferred the collection in 1534 to Fontainebleau and merged it with his private library. The appointment of Jacques Auguste de Thou as librarian in the 17th century, initiated a period of development that made it the largest and richest collection of books in the world. The library opened to the public in 1692, under the administration of Abbé Louvois , Minister Louvois's son. Abbé Louvois
4004-802: The Mantle and The Turke and Gowin . The last three narratives are entirely unknown outside the Percy Folio. The manuscript also preserves eight Robin Hood ballads: " Robin Hood's Death ", " Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne ", " Robin Hood and the Curtal Friar ", " Robin Hood and the Butcher ", " The Jolly Pinder of Wakefield ", " Little John a Begging ", " Robin Hood Rescuing Three Squires ", and " Robin Hood and Queen Katherine ". Percy published several pieces from
4095-833: The NLL became part of the British Library in 1973 it changed its name to the British Library Lending Division, in 1985 it was renamed as the British Library Document Supply Centre and is now known as the British Library Document Supply Service, often abbreviated as BLDSS. BLDSS now holds 87.5 million items, including 296,000 international journal titles, 400,000 conference proceedings, 3 million monographs , 5 million official publications, and 500,000 UK and North American theses and dissertations. 12.5 million articles in
4186-607: The National Libraries of Scotland and Wales are also entitled to copies of material published in Ireland, but again must formally make requests. The Legal Deposit Libraries Act 2003 extended United Kingdom legal deposit requirements to electronic documents, such as CD-ROMs and selected websites. The Library also holds the Asia, Pacific and Africa Collections (APAC) which include the India Office Records and materials in
4277-771: The National Library of Wales. In Australia, the Copyright Act 1968 and other state acts require that a copy of every book published in Australia be deposited with the National Library of Australia , the relevant state library for the state in which the book was published, and some states other libraries such as parliamentary and university libraries. A similar system also exists in Canada with respect to its national library, known as Library and Archives Canada , and in Québec with respect to
4368-651: The Reading Rooms at St Pancras or Boston Spa, are: The Library holds an almost complete collection of British and Irish newspapers since 1840. This is partly because of the legal deposit legislation of 1869, which required newspapers to supply a copy of each edition of a newspaper to the library. London editions of national daily and Sunday newspapers are complete back to 1801. In total, the collection consists of 660,000 bound volumes and 370,000 reels of microfilm containing tens of millions of newspapers with 52,000 titles on 45 km (28 mi) of shelves. From earlier dates,
4459-438: The United Kingdom, the Legal Deposit Libraries Act 2003 restates the Copyright Act 1911 , that one copy of every book published there must be sent to the national library (the British Library ); five other libraries (the Bodleian Library at Oxford University, the Cambridge University Library , the National Library of Scotland , the Trinity College Library, Dublin , and the National Library of Wales ) are entitled to request
4550-431: The basis of the National Library of Russia . Before taken to Russia the collections numbered about 400,000 volumes, including about 13,000 medieval and modern manuscripts. Between 1795 and 1918 no central institution existed collecting printed and handwritten works from the lands that had once formed Poland. Some smaller libraries aimed to fill the gap it left, albeit on a smaller scale. The National Library of Poland
4641-416: The book publishing industry ensures that all significant English language publications from elsewhere in the world are also included. It also has the Federal depository libraries , which must receive a copy of all of the publications of the Government Printing Office . In addition to having a law requiring publishers to deposit books, those countries with legal deposits usually have many other incentives for
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#17328476437934732-462: The books and manuscripts: For many years its collections were dispersed in various buildings around central London , in places such as Bloomsbury (within the British Museum), Chancery Lane , Bayswater , and Holborn , with an interlibrary lending centre at Boston Spa , 2.5 miles (4 km) east of Wetherby in West Yorkshire (situated on Thorp Arch Trading Estate), and the newspaper library at Colindale , north-west London. Initial plans for
4823-427: The branch library near Boston Spa in Yorkshire. The St Pancras building was officially opened by Queen Elizabeth II on 25 June 1998, and is classified as a Grade I listed building "of exceptional interest" for its architecture and history. The British Library was created on 1 July 1973 as a result of the British Library Act 1972. Prior to this, the national library was part of the British Museum , which provided
4914-400: The bulk of the holdings of the new library, alongside smaller organisations which were folded in (such as the National Central Library , the National Lending Library for Science and Technology and the British National Bibliography ). In 1974 functions previously exercised by the Office for Scientific and Technical Information were taken over; in 1982 the India Office Library and Records and
5005-411: The closure of the Round Reading Room on 25 October 1997 the library stock began to be moved into the St Pancras building. Before the end of that year the first of eleven new reading rooms had opened and the moving of stock was continuing. From 1997 to 2009 the main collection was housed in this single new building and the collection of British and overseas newspapers was housed at Colindale . In July 2008
5096-432: The collections from Rapperswil and Paris created by Polish émigré communities. During World War II the most valuable part of the National Library's holdings – almost 800,000 registered items (including c. 50,000 manuscripts destroyed by German Nazis) – were lost forever. The first national library to establish in the Americas became the National Library of Colombia having been founded on 9 January 1777, as
5187-593: The collections include the Thomason Tracts , comprising 7,200 seventeenth-century newspapers, and the Burney Collection , featuring nearly 1 million pages of newspapers from the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The section also holds extensive collections of non-British newspapers, in numerous languages. The Newspapers section was based in Colindale in North London until 2013, when the buildings, which were considered to provide inadequate storage conditions and to be beyond improvement, were closed and sold for redevelopment. The physical holdings are now divided between
5278-438: The collections or search the contents of the Library's website. The Library's electronic collections include over 40,000 ejournals, 800 databases and other electronic resources. A number of these are available for remote access to registered St Pancras Reader Pass holders. PhD theses are available via the E-Theses Online Service (EThOS). In 2012, the UK legal deposit libraries signed a memorandum of understanding to create
5369-418: The domestic libraries of Voltaire and Diderot , which she had purchased from their heirs. Voltaire's personal library is still one of the highlights of the collection. The plan of a Russian public library was submitted to Catherine in 1766 but the Empress did not approve the project for the imperial library until 27 May [ O.S. 16 May] 1795, eighteen months before her death. The cornerstone of
5460-414: The edges of the sheets, losing first or last lines on many pages. Percy did not treat the manuscript particularly well himself; he wrote notes and comments in it and tore out some pages after binding. The original folio is in the British Library , known as Additional MS. 27879. In its present form the manuscript consists of some 520 paper pages, containing 195 individual items. The works were transcribed in
5551-448: The end of 2013, and would ensure that, through technological advancements, all the material is preserved for future generations, despite the fluidity of the Internet. The Euston Road building was Grade I listed on 1 August 2015. It has plans to open a third location in Leeds , potentially located in the Grade 1 listed Temple Works . In England, legal deposit can be traced back to at least 1610. The Copyright Act 1911 established
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#17328476437935642-509: The folio contains an alliterative poem in Middle English entitled Death and Liffe and Scottish Feilde , which is a poem on the Battle of Flodden . The manuscript contains ballads, for the most part, but also metrical romances such as Sir Degaré and The Squire of Low Degree . There are several Arthurian texts, including King Arthur and King Cornwall , Sir Lancelott of Dulake , The Marriage of Sir Gawain , Merline , The Carle of Carlisle , The Greene Knight , The Boy and
5733-484: The following year. British Library 13,950,000 books 824,101 serial titles 351,116 manuscripts (single and volumes) 8,266,276 philatelic items 4,347,505 cartographic items 1,607,885 music scores The British Library is a research library in London that is the national library of the United Kingdom . It is one of the largest libraries in the world . It is estimated to contain between 170 and 200 million items from many countries. As
5824-424: The foreign-language department came from the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in the form of Załuski's Library (420,000 volumes), nationalized by the Russian government at the time of the partitions . The Polish-language books from the library (numbering some 55,000 titles) were returned to Poland by the Russian SFSR in 1921. Although Germany was only constituted as a state in 1871, the first national library
5915-482: The formation of the British Library. The first true national library was founded in 1753 as part of the British Museum . This new institution was the first of a new kind of museum – national, belonging to neither church nor king, freely open to the public and aiming to collect everything. The museum's foundations lay in the will of the physician and naturalist Sir Hans Sloane , who gathered an enviable collection of curiosities over his lifetime which he bequeathed to
6006-406: The founding of a national library, but his proposal was not taken up. In England, Sir Richard Bentley 's Proposal for Building a Royal Library published in 1694 stimulated renewed interest in the subject. Sir Robert Cotton, 1st Baronet, of Connington , a wealthy antiquarian , amassed the richest private collection of manuscripts in the world at the time and founded the Cotton Library . After
6097-406: The hard-copy newspaper collection from 29 September 2014. Now that access is available to legal deposit collection material, it is necessary for visitors to register as a Reader to use the Boston Spa Reading Room. The British Library makes a number of images of items within its collections available online. Its Online Gallery gives access to 30,000 images from various medieval books, together with
6188-430: The idea of the Library dates back to 1732 (presented in Programma literarium by Józef Załuski). The library was one of the first national libraries and largest public libraries of eighteenth-century Europe. Following the death of its founders the library became the property of the Polish state and from 1774 was named the Library of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth ( Polish : Biblioteka Rzeczypospolitej ). In 1780
6279-423: The languages of Asia and of north and north-east Africa. The Library is open to everyone who has a genuine need to use its collections. Anyone with a permanent address who wishes to carry out research can apply for a Reader Pass; they are required to provide proof of signature and address. Historically, only those wishing to use specialised material unavailable in other public or academic libraries would be given
6370-419: The legislation appropriated $ 5,000 "for the purchase of such books as may be necessary for the use of Congress ... and for fitting up a suitable apartment for containing them." Books were ordered from London and the collection, consisting of 740 books and three maps, was housed in the new Capitol . The Imperial Public Library was established in 1795 by Catherine the Great , whose private collections included
6461-419: The library of the University of Limerick , the library of Dublin City University , and the British Library . Four copies are to be delivered to the National University of Ireland for distribution to its constituent universities. Further, on demand in writing within twelve months of publication a copy is to be delivered to the Bodleian Library, Cambridge University Library, the National Library of Scotland, and
6552-405: The main goals of many a national library is the "export aspect" and the collaborative sides of the universal bibliographic control of all the books in the world. This is done by the exchanges and accords mentioned in the previous section, and also by fostering the creation of standard conceptual tools such as library classification systems and cataloguing rules. The most commonly used of these tools
6643-420: The manuscript, many of which were "repaired" or frankly rewritten, especially in his Reliques of Ancient English Poetry , but did not allow fellow historians access to the original manuscript during his lifetime. Percy's book was the constant companion of Gottfried August Bürger , a childhood hero of Novalis , one of the chief influences of George MacDonald , whom C.S. Lewis considered his master. And thus
6734-644: The manuscript, through Percy's book had a direct line of influence on Lewis's works. Despite its losses, the Percy Folio ranks alongside the Exeter Book , the Pearl Manuscript , and the Cotton library 's monstrarum librarum of the Beowulf manuscript as one of the most important documents in English poetry. A full edition of the folio's contents was not published until 1867, with a supplement of "loose and humorous" songs
6825-407: The middle decades of the 17th century. The handwriting in the manuscript appears to be the same throughout and bears some similarity with that of Thomas Blount but it cannot be determined for certain if he originally collected the work. The loose leaves that comprise the manuscript are now individually mounted and covered with gauze. In addition to the ballads culled and compiled by Percy and Child,
6916-568: The nation for £20,000. Sloane's collection included some 40,000 printed books and 7,000 manuscripts , as well as prints and drawings. The British Museum Act 1753 also incorporated the Cotton library and the Harleian library . These were joined in 1757 by the Royal Library, assembled by various British monarchs . The first exhibition galleries and reading room for scholars opened on 15 January 1759, and in 1757, King George II granted it
7007-553: The newspaper and Document Supply collections, make up around 70% of the total material the library holds. The Library previously had a book storage depot in Woolwich , south-east London, which is no longer in use. The new library was designed specially for the purpose by the architect Colin St John Wilson in collaboration with his wife MJ Long , who came up with the plan that was subsequently developed and built. Facing Euston Road
7098-712: The principle of the legal deposit, ensuring that the British Library and five other libraries in Great Britain and Ireland are entitled to receive a free copy of every item published or distributed in Britain. The other five libraries are: the Bodleian Library at Oxford ; the University Library at Cambridge ; Trinity College Library in Dublin ; and the National Libraries of Scotland and Wales . The British Library
7189-609: The property of the French people." The library was founded by King Philip V in 1711 as the Royal Library or Palace Public Library. The Royal Letters Patent that he granted, the predecessor of the current legal deposit requirement, made it mandatory for printers to submit a copy of every book printed in Spain to the library. In 1836, the Crown transferred the library to the Ministry of Governance and it
7280-541: The right to a copy of every book published in the country, thereby ensuring that the museum's library would expand indefinitely. Anthony Panizzi became the Principal Librarian at the British Museum in 1856, where he oversaw its modernization. During his tenure, the library's holdings increased from 235,000 to 540,000 volumes, making it the largest library in the world at the time. Its famous circular Reading Room
7371-753: The same country. Some subnational states that wish to preserve their particular cultures have established comparable libraries with all the attributes of national libraries, such as legal deposit . Many national libraries cooperate within the National Libraries Section of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) to discuss their common tasks, define and promote common standards and carry out projects helping them to fulfill their duties. National libraries of Europe participate in The European Library . This
7462-570: The sites at St Pancras (some high-use periodicals, and rare items such as the Thomason Tracts and Burney collections) and Boston Spa (the bulk of the collections, stored in a new purpose-built facility). National library A national library is a library established by a government as a country's preeminent repository of information. Unlike public libraries , these rarely allow citizens to borrow books. Often, they include numerous rare, valuable, or significant works. A national library
7553-621: The town of Leipzig, seat of the annual Leipzig Book Fair, the Kingdom of Saxony and the Börsenverein der Deutschen Buchhändler (Association of German booksellers) agreed to found a German National Library in Leipzig. Starting 1 January 1913, all publications in German were systematically collected (including books from Austria and Switzerland). The principle of legal deposit applies in some countries. In
7644-524: Was only available to readers in the US, and closed in May 2008. The scanned books are currently available via the British Library catalogue or Amazon . In October 2010 the British Library launched its Management and business studies portal . This website is designed to allow digital access to management research reports, consulting reports, working papers and articles. In November 2011, four million newspaper pages from
7735-493: Was opened in 1857. Panizzi undertook the creation of a new catalogue, based on the "Ninety-One Cataloguing Rules" (1841) which he devised with his assistants. These rules served as the basis for all subsequent catalogue rules of the 19th and 20th centuries, and are at the origins of the ISBD and of digital cataloguing elements such as Dublin Core . In France, the first national library was
7826-614: Was re-founded after Poland regained its independence in 1918, and formally opened in 1928 under the Decree of the President of the Republic of Poland . Following the Treaty of Riga of 1921, most of the manuscripts of Zaluski Library and a large proportion of the prints were returned to Warsaw from Soviet Russia . National Library of Poland also included the collections of other Warsaw-based libraries and
7917-558: Was renamed as National Library of Spain . A year later, women were allowed access to the library for the first time, after a petition from writer Antonia Gutiérrez was granted by Queen Regent Maria Christina . The National Library of Poland continues the tradition of the Załuski Library . The Załuski Library was opened to readers in Warsaw on 8 August 1747, thanks to Józef Załuski's cooperation with his brother Andrzej Załuski , but
8008-741: Was set up in the context of the German revolutions of 1848 . Various booksellers and publishers offered their works to the Frankfurt Parliament for a parliamentary library. The library, led by Johann Heinrich Plath, was termed the Reichsbibliothek (" Reich library"). After the failure of the revolution the library was abandoned and the stock of books already in existence was stored at the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg. In 1912,
8099-412: Was started in 2003 at a cost of £6 million. This offers more than 100 million items (including 280,000 journal titles, 50 million patents, 5 million reports, 476,000 US dissertations and 433,000 conference proceedings) for researchers and library patrons worldwide which were previously unavailable outside the Library because of copyright restrictions. In line with a government directive that
8190-638: Was succeeded by the Abbé Bignon , or Bignon II as he was termed, who instituted a complete reform of the library's system. Catalogues were made which appeared from 1739 to 1753 in 11 volumes. The collections increased steadily by purchase and gift to the outbreak of the French Revolution , at which time it was in grave danger of partial or total destruction, but owing to the activities of Antoine-Augustin Renouard and Joseph Van Praet it suffered no injury. The library's collections swelled to over 300,000 volumes during
8281-532: Was the British Library's Entrepreneur in Residence and Ambassador from 2012 to 2016. As part of its establishment in 1973, the British Library absorbed the National Lending Library for Science and Technology (NLL), based near Boston Spa in Yorkshire, which had been established in 1961. Before this, the site had housed a World War II Royal Ordnance Factory , ROF Thorp Arch , which closed in 1957. When
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