A history of the British Museum Library, 1753-1973

1998/01/01 by P. R. Harris · 1 voice
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #Historical Architecture and Urbanism #Library Science and Administration #Museums and Cultural Heritage

paper · doi:10.23636/t2sw-0b06

openalex publication_date 1998/01/01 · openalex created_date 2026/02/21 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/01

Abstract

This volume spans the period from the Library’s foundation as part of the British Museum, dedicated to ‘all studious and curious persons’, to the separation of the two institutions in 1973. Each of the eleven chronological chapters is subdivided into: reading rooms, trustees and staff, catalogues and publications, collections, accommodation, staff and where appropriate, royal commissions. Six appendices list senior staff, staff structures, some holders of readers’ tickets, 1759-1939, glossary, approximate value of the pound, 1750-195 and a note on statistics. There are 10 plans and 111 illustrations (one redacted here for copyright reasons), a bibliography (8 pp.) and source notes (61 pp.).

Discussions

• @sharpnews.bsky.social @bibsoc.bsky.social This important work about the British Museum Library is now available open access here - doi.org/10.23636/t2s... [bsky, 6 points, 1 comments]

Related

• The Reading Room in Literature
• Sir Hans Sloane’s Books: Seventy Years of Research
• From The Queen’s College to Montagu House: The History of the Thomason Tracts after the Restoration
• Deconstruction and ‘Re-Volumization’: The Thomason Collection in the Past, Present, and Future
• The Formation, development and curation of the Tapling Collection at the British Museum Library in the Nineteenth Century