British Library - Using The Library's Reading Rooms

Using The Library's Reading Rooms

The Library is open to everyone who has a genuine need to use its collections. Anyone with a permanent address who wishes to carry out research can apply for a Reader Pass; they are required to provide proof of signature and address for security purposes.

Historically, only those wishing to use specialised material unavailable in other public or academic libraries would be given a Reader Pass. The Library has been criticised for admitting numbers of undergraduate students, who have access to their own university libraries, to the reading rooms. The Library replied that it has always admitted undergraduates as long as they have a legitimate personal, work-related or academic research purpose.

The majority of catalogue entries can be found on Explore the British Library, the Library's main catalogue, which is based on Primo. Other collections have their own catalogues, such as western manuscripts. The large reading rooms offer hundreds of seats which are often filled with researchers, especially during the Easter and summer holidays.

Read more about this topic:  British Library

Famous quotes containing the words library, reading and/or rooms:

    Knowing I loved my books, he furnished me
    From mine own library with volumes that
    I prize above my dukedom.
    William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

    When I have seen fine statues, and afterwards enter a public assembly, I understand well what he meant who said, “When I have been reading Homer, all men look like giants.”
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    I see slip to the curb the long machines
    Out of whose warm and windowed rooms pirouette
    Shellacked with silk and light
    The hard legs of our women.
    Karl Shapiro (b. 1913)