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131-531: 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

262-934: 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

393-399: 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,

524-467: A carefully staged set piece, the first Class 395 train and two Class 373 trains arrived through a cloud of dry ice in adjacent platforms within seconds of each other. During the ceremony, Paul Day's large bronze statue The Meeting Place was also unveiled. At a much smaller ceremony on 12 November 2007, the bronze statue of John Betjeman by sculptor Martin Jennings was unveiled by Betjeman's daughter,

655-526: A connection to Australia and Scandinavia. The following year, the LTSR began a service from St Pancras to Southend Central . Boat trains continued to run from St Pancras until 1963, after which they were moved to Liverpool Street and Fenchurch Street. The Railways Act 1921 forced the merger of the Midland with the London and North Western Railway (L&NWR) into the London, Midland and Scottish Railway (LMS), and

786-463: A few days to as short as a few hours. Patrons can also gain access to periodicals and journals that require paid subscriptions through their libraries which they can use to access primary research materials. A research library is often connected to the services of the university related to scholarly communication , such as support for open access journals run by the institution and the operation of an institutional repository , as well as support for

917-652: 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

1048-515: 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

1179-601: 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

1310-596: A reputation of having one of the most recognisable facades of all the London termini, and known as the "cathedral of the railways". In Britain's 100 Best Railway Stations by Simon Jenkins , the station was one of only ten to be awarded five stars. The station has bilingual signs in French and English , one of the few in England to do so. It was considered Europe's most passenger-friendly railway station in an index created in 2020 by

1441-581: 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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1572-590: 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)

1703-616: 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

1834-720: 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), 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 ,

1965-632: 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 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:

2096-471: A tunnel from south-east of London to an underground terminus in the vicinity of King's Cross. However, a late change of plan, principally driven by the then Secretary of State for the Environment Michael Heseltine 's desire for urban regeneration in east London, led to a change of route, with the new line approaching London from the east. This opened the possibility of reusing St Pancras as

2227-748: Is a major central London railway terminus on Euston Road in the London Borough of Camden . It is the terminus for Eurostar services from Belgium , France and the Netherlands to London. It provides East Midlands Railway services to Leicester , Corby , Derby , Sheffield and Nottingham on the Midland Main Line , Southeastern high-speed trains to Kent via Ebbsfleet International and Ashford International , and Thameslink cross-London services to Bedford , Cambridge , Peterborough , Brighton , Horsham and Gatwick Airport . It stands between

2358-447: Is able to acquire and maintain materials that are not easily available through traditional acquisition methods. Research libraries can be either reference libraries , which do not lend their holdings, or lending libraries , which do lend all or some of their holdings. Some extremely large or traditional research libraries are entirely reference in this sense, lending none of their material; most academic research libraries , at least in

2489-672: Is at the southern end of the London Borough of Camden on a site orientated north–south, deeper than it is wide. The south is bounded by Euston Road (part of the London Inner Ring Road ), and its frontage is the St Pancras Renaissance London Hotel , while the west is bounded by Midland Road, which separates it from the British Library and Francis Crick Institute , and the east by Pancras Road, which separates it from King's Cross station . The British Library

2620-488: 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

2751-671: 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

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2882-647: Is conducted by their librarians on their topics of choice. Libraries first appeared in Southwest Asia more than 5,000 years ago as repositories to store written resources for retrieval, often written on materials like bamboo, clay, and later papyrus . The most durable of these materials was clay, and tablets made of clay are the most common artifacts retrieved from ancient library sites. Many great civilizations built libraries which contained knowledge and information that were accumulated over years, sometimes centuries, and from across regions. The oldest known library in

3013-438: 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

3144-501: 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 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

3275-462: Is on the former goods yard site. Euston railway station is around ten minutes' walk away along Euston Road. Behind the hotel, the train shed is elevated 5 m (17 ft) above street level and the area below forms the station undercroft which is where most of the shops and restaurants are located, along with the Eurostar departure lounge. The northern half of the station is mainly bounded to

3406-470: Is one of the largest and most well-known research libraries in the world. It is the United States Congress' official research library and is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country, having been founded in 1800. It contains more than 170 million items that cover a wide range of subjects from across the world and in 470 different languages. The library has offices abroad through which it

3537-414: Is that it enables greater automation of workflows within libraries which ensures that they become more streamlined. These increased efficiencies ensure libraries and their librarians are able to provide the highest quality service possible. St Pancras railway station St Pancras railway station ( / ˈ p æ ŋ k r ə s / ), officially known since 2007 as London St Pancras International ,

3668-523: 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 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

3799-540: 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,

3930-637: The Asia, Pacific and Africa Collections (APAC) which include the India Office Records and materials in 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

4061-665: 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 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,

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4192-574: The British Library , the Regent's Canal and London King's Cross railway station , with which it shares a London Underground station, King's Cross St Pancras . The station was constructed by the Midland Railway (MR), to connect its extensive rail network, across the Midlands and North of England , to a dedicated line into London. After rail traffic problems following the 1862 International Exhibition ,

4323-691: The Great Northern Railway (GNR). In 1862, traffic for the second International Exhibition suffered extensive delays over the stretch of line into London over the GNR's track; the route into the city via the L&;NWR was also at capacity, with coal trains causing the network at Rugby and elsewhere to reach effective gridlock. This was the stimulus for the MR to build its own line to London from Bedford, which would be just under 50 miles (80 km) long. Samuel Carter

4454-400: The Midland Main Line , while platforms 5–13 lead to High Speed 1 ; there is no connection between the two lines, except for a maintenance siding outside the station. There are also a variety of shops and restaurants within the station concourse. The longer international platforms, used by Eurostar, extend into Barlow's train shed, whilst the other platforms terminate at the southern end of

4585-534: The Snow Hill tunnel re-opened resulting in the creation of the Thameslink route and the resultant diversion of the majority of suburban trains to the new route. The station continued to be served by trains running on the Midland mainline to Leicester, Nottingham and Sheffield, together with a few suburban services to Bedford and Luton. These constituted only a few trains an hour and left the station underused. Following

4716-494: The privatisation of British Rail , the long-distance services from St Pancras were franchised to Midland Mainline , a train operating company owned by National Express , starting on 28 April 1996. The few remaining suburban trains still operating into St Pancras were operated by the Thameslink train operating company, owned by Govia , from 2 March 1997. A small number of trains to and from Leeds were introduced, mainly because

4847-505: 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

4978-460: The 2005 extension. The international platforms do not occupy the full width of the Barlow train shed, and sections of the floor area have been opened up to provide natural light to the new ground-level concourse below. Eurostar's arrival and departure lounges lie below these platforms, adjacent to The Arcade , a concourse fashioned from the original station undercroft which runs along the western length of

5109-864: 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

5240-407: 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

5371-546: 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 the British Library required demolition of an integral part of Bloomsbury – a seven-acre swathe of streets immediately in front of

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5502-526: 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

5633-534: The Channel Tunnel Rail Link works did not include work on the fitting out of the station, as these works had originally been part of the separate Thameslink 2000 works programme. Despite lobbying by rail operators who wished to see the station open at the same time as St Pancras International, the Government failed to provide additional funding to allow the fit-out works to be completed immediately following

5764-619: The Consumer Choice Center. From December 2018, as part of the Thameslink programme, services from the East Coast Main Line/ Great Northern Route , also part of the Govia Thameslink Railway franchise, were linked to the Thameslink route, diverting trains previously terminating at Kings Cross into the Thameslink platforms at St Pancras and then through central London to Sussex and Kent. This link

5895-518: 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

6026-584: The High Speed 1 service was launched on 6 November 2007 by Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh . Services were extended to Rotterdam and Amsterdam in April 2018. During an elaborate opening ceremony, actor Timothy West , as Henry Barlow, addressed the audience, which was also entertained by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and the singers Lemar and Katherine Jenkins . In

6157-643: The High-Speed Train sets were maintained there and were already running empty north of Sheffield. During the 2000s major rebuild of the West Coast Main Line, St Pancras again temporarily hosted direct and regular inter-city trains to Manchester, this time via the Hope Valley route (via the Dore South curve) under the title of Project Rio . The original plan for the Channel Tunnel Rail Link (CTRL) involved

6288-520: The LMS adopted the LNWR's (the "Premier Line") Euston station as its principal London terminus. The Midland Grand Hotel was closed in 1935, and the building was subsequently used as offices for British Railways . During World War II , bombing inflicted damage on the train shed, which was only partially reglazed after the war. On the night of 10–11 May 1941 a bomb fell onto the station floor at platform 3, exploding in

6419-564: 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 the books and manuscripts: For many years its collections were dispersed in various buildings around central London , in places such as Bloomsbury (within

6550-502: 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

6681-648: 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

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6812-431: The London area services to North Woolwich, St Albans and Bedford. Long-distance trains reached Glasgow, Leeds, Nottingham, Sheffield and Manchester, with famous named trains including The Palatine to Manchester, The Thames-Clyde Express to Glasgow, and The Master Cutler to Sheffield (transferred from King's Cross in 1966, which itself had transferred from Marylebone eight years earlier). On 7 October 1957,

6943-470: The MR decided to build a connection from Bedford to London with its own terminus. The station was designed by William Henry Barlow , with wrought iron pillars supporting a single-span roof. At 689 feet (210 m) by 240 feet (73.2 m) wide, and 100 feet (30.5 m) high, it was then the largest enclosed space in the world. Following the station's opening 1 October 1868, the MR built the Midland Grand Hotel on

7074-486: The MR, as the major routes to Manchester, Nottingham, Sheffield and Carlisle opened during this time. By 1902, there were 150 trains arriving and leaving the station daily, though this was far less than at Waterloo or Liverpool Street. As well as Midland services, the Great Eastern Railway (GER) used St Pancras as a " West End " terminus for trains to Great Yarmouth , Norwich , Lowestoft between 1870 and 1917. At

7205-507: The Midland Main Line to the St. Pancras branch. Instead, due to the value of the land in such a location the lower area was used for freight, in particular beer from Burton . As a result, the undercroft was built with columns and girders, maximising space, set out to the same plans as those used for beer warehouses, and with a basic unit of length that of a beer barrel. The contract to build

7336-427: 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 the closure of the Round Reading Room on 25 October 1997 the library stock began to be moved into the St Pancras building. Before

7467-548: 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

7598-595: 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,

7729-434: 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 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

7860-478: The U.S., now lend books, but not periodicals or other material. Books available in research libraries can include textbooks, journals and rare manuscripts. As the contents of research libraries are so focused, there can sometimes be a high demand for certain book titles. To ensure that as many patrons as possible can have access to the books they need, libraries have reserve collections, the books of which are only available for short-term loans. These loans can range from

7991-538: The advent of technology, this has evolved to include CDs, DVDs, Ebooks, audiobooks and online research catalogues. Research library collections are focused on one or more subjects or fields of study and the material available on those topics are typically more extensive and in-depth than that found in public lending libraries. Institutions such as universities may have multiple research libraries on campus, each dedicated to different faculties or subjects. Research libraries may also publish their own scholarly research which

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8122-422: The appropriate databases or materials or in some cases obtaining these materials from external sources for them. With the changing role of libraries, research librarians' roles have evolved to include more than just selecting and maintaining the library's offerings and books, and helping patrons locate the items of their choice. Today, librarians must also be technologically savvy so they can teach users how to use

8253-434: The author Candida Lycett Green . Public service by Eurostar train via High Speed 1 started on 14 November 2007. In a small ceremony, station staff cut a ribbon leading to the Eurostar platforms. In the same month, services to the East Midlands were transferred to a new franchisee, East Midlands Trains . The low-level Thameslink platforms opened on 9 December 2007, replacing King's Cross Thameslink. St Pancras has retained

8384-752: The basis of historical research. Having a rare book in a library's collection is very prestigious and is often indicative of the library's high standards for materials. Libraries may also have archives of old photographs, films, musical scores and even artwork. They often also have archives of old newspapers and periodicals. Newspapers are often accessible through microfiche machines, which are used to view images of back issues of such publications. Research libraries also often provide patrons with basic technological equipment such as computers, scanners and printers to aid them in their work. These libraries frequently collaborate with one another to share resources through inter-library loans. This enables each library to meet

8515-428: The beer vaults underneath. The station was not significantly damaged, but was closed for eight days, with platforms 2–3 remaining closed until June. In 1947 the St. Pancras junction was relaid with prefabricated trackwork, along with associated changes to the signalling system. On the creation of British Railways (BR) in 1948, St Pancras received a significant investment after neglect by the LMS. Destinations included

8646-425: 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

8777-469: 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 the HMSO Binderies became British Library responsibilities. In 1983,

8908-588: 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

9039-435: 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

9170-405: The early 2010s and has been accelerated due to the COVID-19 pandemic when many libraries across the world were physically closed forcing patrons to rely solely on their electronic offerings. Libraries have had to update their technological infrastructure in order to keep up with the new demands of the public. The first step the average person takes when they conduct research is no longer visiting

9301-418: The east by Camley Street, with Camley Street Natural Park across the road. To the north-east is King's Cross Central , formerly known as the Railway Lands, a complex of intersecting railway lines crossed by several roads and the Regent's Canal . Several London bus routes have stops nearby, including 73 , 205 and 390 . The station's name comes from the St. Pancras parish, whose name originates from

9432-472: The eastern part of the extension immediately adjacent to the entrance. As part of the construction of the western side of the new train shed that now began, an underground "box" was constructed to house new platforms for Thameslink, which at this point ran partially under the extended station. In order for this to happen, the existing Thameslink tunnels between Kentish Town and King's Cross Thameslink were closed between 11 September 2004 and 15 May 2005 while

9563-424: 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 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

9694-472: The entrance to the London tunnel. On 4 September 2007, the first test train ran from Paris Gare du Nord to St Pancras. Children's illustrator Quentin Blake was commissioned to provide a huge mural of an "imaginary welcoming committee" as a disguise for one of the remaining ramshackle Stanley Building South immediately opposite the station exit. St Pancras was officially re-opened as St Pancras International, and

9825-487: The foundations of the roof interfering with the space beneath, and to simplify the design, and minimise cost, it was decided to construct a single span roof, with cross ties for the arch at the station level. The arch was sprung directly from the station level, with no piers. Additional advice on the design of the roof was given to Barlow by Rowland Mason Ordish . The arches' ribs had a web depth of 6 ft (1.8 m), mostly open ironwork. The span width, from wall to wall

9956-461: The fourth-century Christian boy martyr Pancras of Rome . The station was commissioned by the Midland Railway (MR), who had a network of routes in the Midlands and in south and west Yorkshire and Lancashire, but no route of its own to London. Before 1857 the MR used the lines of the L&NWR for trains into the capital; subsequently, the company's Leicester and Hitchin Railway gave access to London via

10087-594: The greatest ancient libraries in the world was the Library of Ashurbanipal , which was founded in the 7th century BC in Niveah, near present-day Iraq , by the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal . The library contained around 30,000 cuneiform tablets written in multiple languages pertaining to scholarly texts, archival documents and religious materials along with some works of ancient literature. The king sent his scribes to other libraries in

10218-471: 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

10349-418: The librarians affiliated with that institution. Digitization projects are often intensive and long-drawn. Librarians need to identify which materials should be digitized and the priority in which they should be digitized. They also need to ascertain what formats will be most suitable for the materials and the patrons, raise the necessary funds and obtain the rights to digitize the items. They then need to prepare

10480-415: The libraries. These resources are often of high quality and are from trusted sources and publishers. They also catalogue and organize the books and resources, maintain and repair books as required.  Librarians can also work with colleagues in other institutions to share resources and better the relationships between institutions. Librarians who work in research libraries often have in-depth knowledge of

10611-457: The library at its height had up to 400,000 scrolls, though there is uncertainty regarding the exact number and how many scrolls were original works, as some of these may have been copies. The works collected covered a wide range of topics including works by Homer , Herodotus , Plato , and Aristotle . The library drew scholars from across the world and led to Alexandria being known as a hub for knowledge and learning. The US Library of Congress

10742-404: The library but searching for information online. Patrons will obtain a basic understanding of their topic and identify the books or materials they need before ever setting foot in a library. They can also identify which libraries will provide them the most convenient access to these materials through online archives and catalogues. This is what makes effective digitization projects in libraries and

10873-617: The library has the materials they need and when and how these materials will be available for their use. Many libraries also have interlinked systems that enable patrons to reserve and borrow books from affiliated libraries, effectively increasing their collection size while keeping costs down. This can make it possible for libraries to offer resources that have a narrow appeal and a low demand but that could still be useful for patrons to access. Libraries are also required to be more efficient to meet both consumer demand and to keep up with continuing budget cuts. One benefit of increasing digitization

11004-700: 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 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

11135-470: The library's electronic systems. Many librarians conduct their own independent research on topics pertaining to a library's field or on the topic of libraries themselves. When the library is affiliated with an academic institution, librarians may even have quotas on how much research they must complete and how many papers they should publish. Oftentimes, these librarians have to meet their quotas in order to be eligible for promotions or even tenure positions at

11266-435: The library. Librarians' research can help to improve the level of service offered by the staff of the institution by increasing their knowledge of the investigative process. The research conducted may also support the operations of the library. Librarians also spearhead the digitization projects of any primary research sources that the library might have. These sources are typically the result of research projects conducted by

11397-521: The line blockade. Eventually, on 8 February 2006, Alistair Darling , the Secretary of State for Transport, announced £50 million funding for the fit-out of the station, plus another £10–15 million for the installation of associated signalling and other lineside works. The fit-out works were designed by Chapman Taylor and Arup (Eurostar) and completed by ISG Interior Plc Contractors collaborating with Bechtel as Project Managers. The client

11528-440: The main motivation for the London extension, the Midland realised the prestige of having a central London passenger terminus and decided it must have a front on Euston Road. The company purchased the eastern section of land on the road's north side owned by Earl Somers . The passenger station was designed by William Henry Barlow and constructed on a site that had previously been a slum called Agar Town . The approach line to

11659-571: The maintenance of accurate online catalogues crucial for libraries' continued survival. Libraries may also have functions on their websites which enable patrons to email librarians with questions directly to obtain answers in a quick and efficient manner and also ensure that questions will be addressed by the most qualified party. Libraries are now required to have extensive digital collections which comprise electronic journals, Ebooks and virtual reference services. They must also make their catalogues available online for users to quickly determine whether

11790-503: 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 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

11921-510: The needs of more patrons while keeping their costs down. Libraries may also collaborate to share the costs features such as licensing information sources. This is especially important today, with libraries being required to offer more services for their patrons with fewer resources. Librarians at research libraries are responsible for curating the library's collections. They identify the best books and resources by reading catalogues, publishers' announcements and book reviews, and acquire them for

12052-559: 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 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

12183-606: The office blocks that replaced the Euston Arch. The station offices in the listed former Midland Grand Hotel building were subsequently refurbished in 1993, including a new roof with 275 tonnes of Westmorland Green slate. After the sectorisation of British Rail in 1986, main-line services to the East Midlands were provided by the InterCity sector, with suburban services to St Albans, Luton and Bedford by Network SouthEast . In 1988

12314-464: The original documents, have them scanned or otherwise converted and ensure that all the necessary metadata is added. They then have to perform quality checks to ensure that the material is of the highest quality and fit to be released to the public. With the rapid advancement of technology and the advent of the digital age, consumers expectations are changing and libraries are being required to improve their digital infrastructure. This phenomenon began in

12445-486: The outer edge. It was 689 feet (210 m) long, 240 feet (73.2 m) wide, and 100 feet (30.5 m) high at the apex above the tracks. Local services began running to the Metropolitan Railway junction underneath the terminus on 13 July 1868. The station itself opened to the public on 1 October. The first service was an overnight mail train from Leeds. St Pancras was built during a period of expansion for

12576-460: The rebuilding of Euston and the consolidation of these services. By the 1960s, St Pancras was seen as redundant, and several attempts were made to close it and demolish the hotel (by then known as St Pancras Chambers). These attempts provoked strong and successful opposition, with the campaign led by the later Poet Laureate , John Betjeman . Jane Hughes Fawcett with the Victorian Society

12707-479: The reconstruction was Alistair Lansley , a former colleague of Nick Derbyshire recruited by RLE. To accommodate 300-metre+ Eurostar trains , and to provide capacity for the existing trains to the Midlands and the new Kent services on the high-speed rail link, the train shed was extended a considerable distance northwards by a new flat-roofed shed. The station was initially planned to have 13 platforms under this extended train shed. East Midlands services would use

12838-607: The region to record their contents to create a register of contents. Probably the most renowned library in the ancient world was the Great Library of Alexandria , in Egypt . The library was part of the royal complex that included the research institution known as the Mouseion , and is believed to have been established during the reigns of Ptolemy I Soter (367–283 BC) and his son Ptolemy II Philadelphus (285–246 BC). There are report that

12969-471: The signalling at St Pancras was upgraded, replacing the three original boxes with a power box controlling 205 route switches and 33 points over a network of 1,400 relays. From 1960 to 1966, electrification work on the West Coast Main Line between London and Manchester saw a new Midland Pullman from Manchester to St Pancras. These trains and those to Glasgow were withdrawn following the completion of

13100-1091: 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). Research library Research libraries face a unique challenge of making research materials accessible and available to patrons. They also need to ensure there are no copyright-related issues with their materials, ensure that as many materials as possible are open access, and ensure all their materials are reliably sourced. Some specialized research libraries could include those affiliated to governmental organizations which may hold documents of historical, legal or political import, or music libraries which will have books and journals on music, as well as films and recordings for musicians to access. Research libraries will generally have materials that are typically non-fiction and scholarly. These traditionally included books, periodicals, journals, newspapers, manuscripts and cassette tapes. With

13231-422: The station by a new concourse at its north end. This original design was later modified, with access to the Eurostar platforms from below, using the station undercroft and allowing the deletion of the visually intrusive bridge. By dropping the extension of any of the Midland platforms into the train shed, space was freed up to allow wells to be constructed in the station floor, which provided daylight and access to

13362-477: The station crossed the Regent's Canal at a height allowing the line reasonable gradients; this resulted in the level of the line at St Pancras being 20 ft (6 m) above the ground level. (By contrast, the lines to the adjacent King's Cross station tunnel under the Regent's Canal.) Initial plans were for a two or three span roof with the void between station and ground level filled with spoil from tunnelling to join

13493-502: The station substructure and connecting lines was given to Messrs. Waring , with Barlow's assistant Campion as supervisor. The lower floor for beer warehousing contained interior columns 15 ft (4.6 m) wide and 48 ft (14.6 m) deep, carrying girders supporting the main station and track. The connection to the Widened Lines (St. Pancras branch) ran below the station's bottom level, in an east-to-west direction. To avoid

13624-476: The station's façade. George Gilbert Scott won the competition to design it, with an ornate Gothic red-brick scheme. St Pancras has been widely praised for its architecture and is now a Grade I listed building . St Pancras came under threat during the 20th century; damaged in both World War I and World War II by bombs, and then in the late 1960s by plans to demolish it entirely and divert services to King's Cross and Euston . A passionate campaign to save

13755-664: The station, led by the Victorian Society , Jane Hughes Fawcett , and Poet Laureate John Betjeman , was successful, and St Pancras was awarded Grade I listed status just 10 days before demolition was due to commence. At the start of the 21st century, the complex underwent an £800 million refurbishment to become the terminal for the Channel Tunnel Rail Link/High-Speed 1/HS1 as part of an urban regeneration plan across East London , and opened by Queen Elizabeth II in November 2007. A security-sealed terminal area

13886-407: The station. The design and project management of reconstruction was undertaken on behalf of LCR by Rail Link Engineering (RLE), a consortium of Bechtel , Arup , Systra and Halcrow . The original reference design for the station was by Nick Derbyshire , former head of British Rail's in-house architecture team. The master plan of the complex was by Foster and Partners , and the lead architect of

14017-441: The subjects that are the focus of the institutions in which they work. They are therefore able to answer more specific topical queries that patrons might have while also giving advice on the best resources to access for the necessary information. They conduct informational or reference interviews with patrons to ascertain what information they are looking for, and the purpose behind their research. This can help them to direct users to

14148-603: The terminus, with access via the North London Line , which crosses the throat of the station. The idea of using the North London line was rejected in 1994 by the transport secretary , John MacGregor , as "difficult to construct and environmentally damaging". However, the idea of using St Pancras station as the terminus was retained, albeit now linked by 12.4 miles (20 km) of new tunnels to Dagenham via Stratford . London and Continental Railways (LCR), created at

14279-508: The time of British Rail privatisation, was selected by the government in 1996 to reconstruct St Pancras, build the CTRL, and take over the British share of the Eurostar operation. LCR had owned St Pancras station since privatisation to allow the station to be redeveloped. Financial difficulties in 1998, and the collapse of Railtrack in 2001, caused some revision of this plan, but LCR retained ownership of

14410-420: The train shed extension was completed. The rebuilding cost was in the region of £800 million, up from an initial estimate of £310 million. In early November 2007, Eurostar conducted a testing programme in which some 6000 members of the public were involved in passenger check-in, immigration control and departure trials, during which the "passengers" each made three return journeys out of St Pancras to

14541-528: The turn of the 20th century, St Pancras had a faster service to Cambridge than from King's Cross, at 71 minutes. GER services were suspended because of World War I and never resumed. The London, Tilbury and Southend Railway (LTSR) began boat train services from St Pancras from 9 July 1894, following the opening of the Tottenham and Forest Gate Railway . The trains ran from St Pancras to Tilbury via South Tottenham and Barking . Tilbury Docks then provided

14672-491: The undercroft. The reconstruction of the station was recorded in the BBC Television documentary series The Eight Hundred Million Pound Railway Station broadcast as six 30-minute episodes between 13‒28 November 2007. By early 2004, the eastern side of the extended train shed was complete, and the Barlow train shed was closed to trains. From 12 April 2004, Midland Mainline trains terminated at an interim station occupying

14803-545: The usage of other institutions' repositories and open archives through discovery tools and academic search engines like BASE , CORE and Unpaywall . Rare books and manuscripts are often very valuable and can sometimes be fragile. These are often not available for loan, and can only be accessed within the library and sometimes under the supervision of the librarian. Rare books are those that were printed before 1850 and of which very few copies still exist today. They are highly valuable for research purposes as they often form

14934-581: The wall of his barn where it still kept good time. Decades later during the stations renewal as 'St Pancras International', Dent of London were able to create an exact replica of the clock by using the original as a template. Hoggard was invited to the 2007 grand re-opening of St Pancras, and able to see the impressive new clock installed exactly where the original had been. Also in 1978, a Private Eye piece claimed that British Rail really wanted to demolish St Pancras but were opposed by "a lot of long-haired sentimentalists" and "faceless bureaucrats" and praised

15065-436: The western platforms, Eurostar services the middle platforms, and Kent services the eastern platforms. The Eurostar platforms and one of the Midland platforms would extend back into the Barlow train shed. Access to Eurostar for departing passengers would be via a departure suite on the west of the station, and then to the platforms by a bridge above the tracks within the historic train shed. Arriving Eurostar passengers would leave

15196-437: The works were carried out. Thameslink services from the north terminated in the same platforms as the Midland Main Line trains, while services from the south terminated at King's Cross Thameslink. When the lines were re-opened, the new station box was still only a bare concrete shell and could not take passengers. Thameslink trains reverted to their previous route but ran through the station box without stopping. The budget for

15327-426: The world renown Dent the unique time-piece was financially valuable, but during removal it was somehow dropped, shattering on the floor below. Now worth far less money, it was sold to Roland Hoggard, a train-guard nearing retirement, for £25. It took over a week for Hoggard to transport the giant broken clock, a few parts at a time, to his Nottinghamshire home, where he diligently pieced it all back together, to hang on

15458-526: The world was excavated in Ebla in northern Syria. Excavation of the site of the ancient city began in 1964 and archeologists have since uncovered more than 20,000 clay tablets that documented the economic and cultural life of the city's residents. Archives dating back to 3000 BC were also discovered in 1975. The library also contained scientific records and observations on topics such as zoology , mineralogy , and information on Ebla's business and tax issues. One of

15589-447: Was 245 ft 6 in (74.83 m), with a rib every 29 ft 4 in (8.94 m). The arch was a slightly pointed design, with a reduced radius of curvature at the springing points. The Butterley Company was contracted to construct the arches. The total cost of the 24 rib roof and glazing was over £53,000, of which over half was for the main ribs. The cost of the gable end was a further £8,500. The single-span overall roof

15720-401: Was London and Continental Railways who were advised by Hitachi Consulting . In 2005, planning consent was granted for a refurbishment of the former Midland Grand Hotel building, with plans to refurbish and extend it as a hotel and apartment block. The newly refurbished hotel opened to guests on 21 March 2011 with a grand opening ceremony on 5 May. By the middle of 2006, the western side of

15851-457: Was constructed for Eurostar services to mainland Europe via High Speed 1 and the Channel Tunnel , with platforms for domestic trains to the north and south-east of England. The restored station has 15 platforms, a shopping centre, and a coach facility. London St Pancras International is owned by HS1 Ltd and managed by Network Rail (High Speed), a subsidiary of Network Rail . St Pancras

15982-528: Was instrumental in its preservation, and was dubbed "the furious Mrs. Fawcett" by British rail officials. Many of the demonstrators had witnessed the demolition of the nearby Euston Arch a few years previously and were strongly opposed to the distinctive architecture of St Pancras suffering the same fate. The station became Grade I listed building in November 1967, preventing any drastic modifications. The plans were scrapped by BR in December 1968, realising that it

16113-528: Was made in the hope that a high-speed service could connect the two stations and was announced at a ceremony headed by Claude Solard, Director General of SNCF . St Pancras contains four groups of platforms on two levels, accessed via the main concourse at ground level. The below-surface group contains through platforms A and B, and the upper level has three groups of terminal platforms: domestic platforms 1–4 and 11–13 on each side of international platforms 5–10. Platforms A & B serve Thameslink, 1–4 connect to

16244-655: Was made possible by the construction of a pair of single-track tunnels, named the Canal Tunnels ; these tunnels start immediately off the St Pancras Thameslink platforms, dive under the Regent's Canal , and join the East Coast Main Line where the North London Line and High Speed 1 pass over the top. In October 2019, St Pancras was twinned with the Gare de Bordeaux Saint-Jean , Bordeaux , France. The association

16375-473: Was more cost-effective to modernise the hotel instead, though they disliked owning it. In the 1970s, the train shed roof was in danger of collapse, and the newly appointed Director of Environment Bernard Kaukas persuaded the company to invest £3m to save it. In 1978, British Rail attempted to raise funds with the sale of the impressive 18 foot diameter station clock, allegedly to a wealthy American collector for £250,000. Custom made for St Pancras station by

16506-521: 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

16637-405: 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 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

16768-551: Was solicitor for the parliamentary bill, which was sanctioned in 1863. The main economic justification for the MR extension was for the transport of coal and other goods to the capital, which was hindered by a 1s 9d toll on GNR lines. A large goods station was constructed between 1862 and 1865, sited to the west of the King's Cross coal depot between the North London Railway and the Regent's Canal . Although coal and goods were

16899-412: 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

17030-531: 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

17161-399: Was the largest such structure in the world at the time of its completion. The materials used were wrought iron framework of lattice design, with glass covering the middle half and timber (inside)/slate (outside) covering the outer quarters. The two end screens were glazed in a vertical rectangular grid pattern with decorative timber cladding around the edge and wrought iron finials around

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