Digital Technology Transforms Access to British Library
Digital technology has transformed access to the British Library for both the public and researchers over the past year through a range of initiatives detailed in the British Library’s Annual Report, which was published today.
These include:
- British Library Direct, where users can search the world’s top 20,000 research journals and access the full text online.
- The Integrated Catalogue, a major step towards providing users with an online overview of everything held by the Library.
- Agreement of the fundamental design of the national digital library which will store and provide access to the UK’s electronic materials in perpetuity.
- A pilot project for the National Digital Library to collect e-journals from academic publishers, within the legal deposit framework.
- Web archiving projects to capture the UK’s key websites including the 2012 Olympics sites.
- The Online Gallery, which brings together all the Library’s virtual exhibitions.
- Collect Britain, which showcases 100,000 items of regional significance – a cross section of the Library’s British Collections.
- The addition of the Sherborne Missal to the award winning Turning the Pages for the 1,300th anniversary of the Abbey’s foundation.
- Launch of a project to digitise the Codex Sinaiticus, the world’s oldest bible and development of other digitisation projects.
Launching the British Library’s Annual Report 04/05, Chief Executive Lynne Brindley said, “I remain committed to continuously improving and finding new ways in which our services, collections and skills can be exploited to contribute to economic and social development and cultural life in the UK. New technologies are transforming the way in which information is created, disseminated, stored and accessed and the British Library is leading the way in responding to these new opportunities and challenges.
“We are increasingly able to give people the same services online and onsite so our users won’t always have to visit St Pancras to get what they need. There is still work to be done, but increasing digital access is creating a powerful resource for everyone who wants to do research for academic, personal or commercial purposes.”
In addition to these digital initiatives, record numbers of users are coming in to the Library at St Pancras. The British Library opened a pilot Business and Intellectual Property Centre in 2004 which attracted 25,000 new users during its first year. Targeted at SMEs, the centre offers a range of services from information skills, databases, research reports and business know-how.
Visitors to exhibitions and public events were up from 75,000 to 100,000 a month and the Silk Road exhibition broke all records with over 150,000 visitors seeing a wealth of treasures from Chinese Central Asia on show for the first time.
The British Library won a number of prestigious awards in 2004/05, including five major web awards for Turning the Pages; ‘Overall Champion’ in the Public Accountability Awards run by the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy; the Berliner Award for the Sound Archive; Gold Award for diversity from The Society of Personnel Officers; and the British Library was the winning team on University Challenge – The Professionals.
Further information
For further information please contact:
Gill Webber
British Library Press Office
+44 (0)20 7412 7110
Notes for Editors
- The British Library’s Annual Report 2004/05 is available at www.bl.uk/about/annual/2004to2005/introduction.html.
- The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom. It exists for everyone who wants to do research – for academic, personal or commercial purposes. The Library was founded in 1972 by an Act of Parliament which brought together eight institutions including the British Museum Library, and the National Lending Library for Science and Technology.