The British Library - The National Library of the United Kingdom. She is based in London and its branch - library and reading room - located in the village of Boston Spa, West Yorkshire. It is the largest library in the world by the number of storage units - more than 150 million.

British Library was established on July 1, 1973, before that it was part of the British Museum. In 1983 the library was transferred to the National Archives record - more than a million CDs and thousands of films.

The core of the library collection are those that formed the basis for its library of Sir Hans Sloane, the founder of the British Museum, Sir Robert Cotton, Robert Harley and King George III. Along with the collection of the Royal Library, the British Library has inherited the right to receive legal deposit of each printed books in the country.

Over the years, the library's funds were kept in different places in London and beyond, and only in 1997 it was raised to a new purpose-built building on Euston Road.

Get a library card can be anyone who has a need to use the library collections and services. To do this, submit a permanent residence address and the specimen signature. Part of medieval books digitized and available online, including the famous Lindisfarne Gospels of VII century.

Library funds include not only books and magazines, but also newspapers, postage stamps, a grand audio archive, manuscripts, maps and more. The best-known books from the collection of the British Library: Diamond Sutra - the world's earliest dated printed book; Lindisfarne Gospels of VII century; Two Gutenberg Bible; two copies of the Magna Carta (Magna Carta) in 1215; the only surviving medieval manuscript copy of the poem "Beowulf"; Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci; Gospel belonging to Anne Boleyn.