A History of the British Museum Library, 1753-1973

Designed to coincide with the move to St Pancras in 1998, this is a comprehensive history of the British Museum Library, an institution regarded as a repository of knowledge and a cornerstone of scholarship. It deals with the growth of the Library from the 18th century to 1973, when the British Library absorbed the old British Museum Library. Each chapter has sections dealing with the the growth of the collections, their accommodation and cataloguing, and the reading rooms in which they have been made available. Full references to original sources are given and there are numerous illustrations and plans of the various buildings in which the collections have been preserved. Among the appendices is a list of well-known persons who have used the reading rooms.