British Museum Library

located in London; the largest library in Great Britain. It carries out the functions of a national library. One of the largest libraries in the world.

The British Museum Library was founded in 1753. According to 1969 data, its collections amount to approximately 7 million volumes of printed publications and 200,000 manuscripts in European languages, 250,000 printed books and 38,000 manuscripts in Oriental languages, 500,000 geographic maps, and approximately 1 million copies of musical scores. The national reference division on science and inventions receives approximately 20,000 scientific and technical journals and possesses 110,000 volumes (11 million items) of patents. The annual growth in the collections of the British Museum Library exceeds 1 million items. The British Museum Library preserves Egyptian, Greek, and Roman papyruses and more than 10,000 incunabula. Of special importance are the collections of literature on botany, zoology, geology, and mineralogy. There are also collections of printed publications from the time of the English Revolution of the 17th century and the Great French Revolution.

The British Museum Library has six reading rooms with 670 seats for readers. The most famous of these is the main (round) reading room constructed by Panizzi in the middle of the 19th century. It was in this room that K. Marx worked on his Capital during the 1850’s and 1860’s. V. I. Lenin also worked there during the years 1902–03, 1907, and 1908. Lenin had a high opinion of the collections of the British Museum Library, especially of the collection of Russian literature.

The publishing house connected with the British Museum Library issues a current national bibliography entitled The British National Bibliography and prints cards for British books. The latest edition (1964) of the printed catalogs of the British Museum Library contains 263 volumes with supplements.