The document provides information about the history and operations of the British Library. It discusses how the British Library was formed in 1973 by merging various collections that were previously housed in separate buildings. It holds over 25 million printed books and other materials. The new library complex opened in 1997-1998 in London near St. Pancras Station to unite its vast collections under one roof. Plans for the new complex took many years to approve and fund.

1. PAPER BOOK
G.ZULBAYAR /230/
2011.10.12
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SUBJECT;BRITISH OF LIBRARY

2. British Library
/History/
 National library of Great Britain, formed by the British
Library Act (1972) and organized by July 1, 1973. For
much of the 20th century its holdings were divided among
the British Museum library (with some 12 million volumes)
and several other buildings, but in 1997–98 a new
complex was opened in London, England, near St.
Pancras Station in order to unify its vast collections. The
British Library holds more than 25 million printed books as
well as hundreds of thousands of periodicals, microfilms,
rare manuscripts, and titles in electronic form. Its special
offerings include the Oriental and India Office Collections
(transferred from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office
in 1982), the National Sound Archive (formerly the British
Institute of Recorded Sound, incorporated into the library
in 1983), printed music, a map library, and philatelic
materials.

3. British musuem Library
/breifly/
 The British Museum library was long housed in the main building
of the British Museum, in Bloomsbury, London. The museum (with
its library) was founded in 1753 on the basis of the collections of
Sir Hans Sloane; Edward and Robert Harley, earls of Oxford; and
Sir Robert Cotton. In 1757 George II presented to the library what
is now known as the Old Royal Library (books collected by the
kings of England from Edward IV to George II), which brought with
it the right to a free copy of all books published in the United
Kingdom. The museum library grew to become one of the world‘s
largest and finest with the addition of the second royal library, that
of George III, which was presented by George IV in 1823. The
centrepiece of the British Museum library was the huge, round,
dome-ceilinged Reading Room (see photograph), which was
designed by Sydney Smirke in association with the librarian
Anthony Panizzi and completed by 1857. Karl Marx, Virginia
Woolf, and many other illustrious writers and thinkers, both British
and foreign, did their work in that room.

4. British Library
/action/
 As the library holdings grew in the 20th century, additional space was
acquired in Bloomsbury, and annexes were opened at Bayswater and
other London locations. Many of the newspaper collections were moved
to Colindale (now in the borough of Barnet in northern London), where a
newspaper repository (1905) was replaced by the full-service British
Museum Newspaper Library (1932). During the air raids of World War II,
some 225,000 volumes were destroyed at the British Museum, and tens
of thousands of newspapers were burned at Colindale. Repairs to
damaged buildings were carried out in the 1950s and ‘60s. In 1962 the
National Lending Library for Science and Technology was established at
Boston Spa, Yorkshire. The Newspaper Library became part of the
British Library in 1973, but in the late 1990s its collections were
relocated to the main St. Pancras library.
 Plans for a central library complex were first requested in the 1960s
from the architects Sir Leslie Martin and Colin St. John Wilson, but these
designs, and others in 1973, met with resistance from local residents
and various politicians concerned over the preservation of existing
buildings and the expenditure of public funds for the project.

5.  Land was purchased beside St. Pancras Station in 1976, and
new plans by Wilson were officially approved two years later.
Money for construction was held up until 1982, however, and
the project was plagued by further shortages of funding and
political support. During construction its architecture was
decried by some—most notably by Charles, prince of Wales—
but other critics applauded its modern style and its
conveniences. At the time of its royal opening in 1998 the
library complex had nearly 1,200 seats for readers (about one-
third the number originally planned). Google‘s plan to digitize
the books of five major libraries had worldwide implications.

6. Libraries
 The year 2005 again offered proof that libraries were not immune to matters that shaped
society. Google, the ubiquitous Internet search service, in late 2004 had announced
plans to digitize books from the collections of five great research libraries in the U.S. and
Britain. The Christian Science Monitor compared the project to Gutenberg‘s invention of
the printing press in its importance to the dissemination of knowledge. A test service,
Google Print, was launched as digitalization efforts progressed, but in August 2005
Google suspended the operation owing to copyright disputes with publishers and
publishing associations. In September a number of authors filed suit on the basis of
copyright issues.
 Google‘s bold venture, however, sparked international ramifications. Hungarian
Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany wrote to his counterparts in France, Germany, Italy,
Spain, and Poland to propose that all these countries begin digitizing the contents of their
libraries. Without this effort, he wrote, ―this heritage will perhaps not occupy its deserved
place in the scholarship of the future.‖ The director of the French Bibliothèque Nationale
publicly worried about ―the risk of America reinforcing its crushing domination of future
generations‘ understanding of the world.‖ Worldwide, digitalization of library materials
was drawing attention. The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA)
awarded a six-year, $308 million contract to Lockheed Martin to build NARA‘s Electronic
Records Archives. An op-ed article in the Toronto Star urged the Canadian government
to begin work on digitizing much of the content of the national library, and libraries
everywhere, notably the British Library (BL), were digitizing their unique materials and
mounting them on the Web.

7. British Library
/Raeding room/
 At the Anna Amalia Library in Weimar, Ger., a previously unknown aria
composed by Johann Sebastian Bach was discovered. A 27-year campaign by
the Italian city of Benevento resulted in an order for the BL to surrender a 12th-
century illuminated missal believed to have been looted during World War II. The
BL was also facing the loss of the world‘s oldest Bible, the Codex Sinaiticus, to a
monastery in Egypt. The Codex, which had been housed in the monastery since
the 6th century, was removed in the 19th century and purchased by the BL in
1933 from the Imperial Library in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg).
 A provision of the USA PATRIOT Act that allowed federal police agencies to
demand circulation records and placed a gag order on library workers was hotly
debated in both the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate as Congress
considered renewal of the law. Despite stiff resistance from a coalition of liberals,
libertarians, and librarians, the renewals passed, and a conference committee
was to attempt to resolve differences in the respective versions. Before that could
happen, however, a federal judge lifted a gag order on a Connecticut library that
sued the government over the constitutionality of the gag order permitted by the
PATRIOT Act. Government lawyers promptly and successfully appealed the
ruling, and the gag order was reinstated.

8. Savings books
 In August the International Federation of Library Associations and
Institutions convened in Oslo as an expanded and renovated National
Library of Norway was inaugurated. In Bahrain the Shaikh Isa National
Library opened, and in Iran the inauguration of a new National Library
occasioned a diplomatic incident following the detainment at the airport
and subsequent deportation of the editor of American Libraries
magazine, the membership magazine of the American Library
Association. In the U.S. the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and
Museum opened in Springfield, Ill.
 Four public libraries opened in small communities in Nepal through a
partnership of individual villages with the U.S.-based READ literacy-
advocacy organization. Over the past 15 years, some 35 public libraries
had opened in that country. In Imphal, India, protesters torched the
Central Library of the state of Manipur. The group that took credit for the
act also threatened newspapers and publishing companies that used
Bengali script, the language of the library‘s 145,000-volume collection.

9.  Hurricane Katrina devastated libraries along the U.S. Gulf Coast. Public libraries in
Gulfport and Biloxi, Miss., and in the parishes surrounding New Orleans were
destroyed. A branch library in Pass Christian, Miss., was described simply as
―gone.‖ In New Orleans the first floor of Dillard University‘s library was under water,
and the entire Southern University campus might have to be rebuilt. A card catalog
in the school‘s library had drawers exploded by water-swollen cards. Tulane
University and the New Orleans Public Library‘s main branch, however, seemed to
have escaped major damage. In most areas of the affected region, roofs were
ripped off and library collections destroyed. In many cases library workers who
evacuated could not learn the fate of their workplaces, and across the country
evacuees inundated libraries to communicate with loved ones and file applications
for aid from FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency). The Houston
Public Library set up temporary libraries in some emergency shelters, and libraries
across the country collected books to send to the devastated area. Recovery of
libraries and library services, however, would likely take years; the impact of
Hurricane Rita was still undetermined.
 The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation awarded $1 million to Shidhulai Swanirvar
Sangstha, a nongovernmental organization that used boats to take Internet access
and computer training to impoverished villages in Bangladesh. In The Netherlands
a public library instituted a program to ―lend out,‖ for 45 minutes of conversation in
the library‘s coffee shop, people from minority groups. Among these people
available to be ―checked out‖ were Roma (Gypsies), Muslims, gays, lesbians,
noncriminal drug addicts, and asylum seekers

10. АВOUT LIBRARIES
Libraries
 The word library comes from the Latin word liber, meaning
‗book‘. This is a place where information in print books,
manuscripts, periodicals and musical scores and in other forms
is collected and arranged to serve people of all ages and
interests.
 Libraries appeared in ancient times in Egypt, Assyria,
Greece and Rome. Perhaps the most famous library of that
early day was at Alexandra. It was found by Ptolomy I.
 Ptolomy ordered the librarians to collect all Greek texts as well
as manuscripts in other languages from every part of the
known world. By the middle of the 1st
 century BC there were about 700,000 papyrus rolls in the
library.

11.  The first libraries in Russia were established in medieval
monasteries. Public libraries were opened in the 19th century at
the Academy of Sciences and Moscow University.
 The library today is a centre for all kinds of communications:
printed, pictured, recorded, and even electronically stored. People
go to the library to read, look, listen, search, inquire, relax,
discuss, learn, and think.
 Libraries can be found in many places. There are libraries in
small towns and large cities, and there are libraries in schools,
universities, colleges.
 The largest and best known libraries in the world are: the
British National Library in London, the library of Congress in
Washington and the Russian State Library.
 The national libraries of different countries keep in touch and
exchange books and information.

12.  Many people have books at home. These are
the books of their favourite authors dictionaries
and reference books and the like. My family
also has a home library. It was my grandfather
who started to collect it at the beginning of this
century. There are over two thousand books in
it . The authors I like most of all are Chekhov,
Bulgakov, Fitzgerald, Cortasar and others.

13.  Most libraries have a professionally educated staff
whose first duty is to help you. Librarians also select
and purchase books and other materials, organize
materials so that you can easily use them, answer
questions about facts, people, events, or advise you
how to find the information you need.