Construction of British Library

The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom, established in July 1973 under the British Library Act of 1972. It brought together several older institutions, above all the library departments of the British Museum, whose collections formed the core of its holdings. It is a legal deposit library, which means that it is entitled to a copy of every book published in the United Kingdom and Ireland. For many years its collections were housed in the British Museum's Reading Room and other buildings, and a purpose-built home at St Pancras, designed by Colin St John Wilson, opened in the late 1990s. Its collection holds treasures such as the Lindisfarne Gospels, Magna Carta manuscripts and the Codex Sinaiticus.

Open on the timeline