Living Knowledge

The British Library 20152023

Contents

Foreword
Baroness Blackstone, Chairman

Introduction

The changing context

Custodianship

10

Research

14

Business

18

Culture

22

Learning

26

International

30

Enabling the vision

34

In 2023 the British Library will celebrate fifty

years as the national library of the United
Kingdom. This publication sets out our vision
for the kind of organisation we want to be by
the time we reach that milestone. It describes
a Library that will have transformed itself in
response to the profound changes in technology,
research and information services which were
outlined at the beginning of this decade in our
2020 Vision, while remaining true to the Librarys
founding principles and purposes.
As we have been preparing Living Knowledge in
recent months, we have considered what it means
to be a national library in a digital age and what
the British Librarys role is as one of the UKs
great public assets.
The British Library has a duty to preserve, store
and make available content of all kinds in digital
and physical formats. We know of course that
there is still more to do to improve access to
knowledge and cultural opportunities across the
whole of the UK. We are committed to playing
our part to address this gap.

This publication sets out the British Librarys

ambitions for growth, innovation and
development over the next eight years and
beyond. It is based on six statements of purpose;
explaining how our public funding supports
research, culture, education and economic
prosperity, for the benefit not just of the UK
but of users and partners around the world.
We are indebted to those who support the British
Library through financial or other means, and
to the thousands of people who use our Reading
Rooms, public spaces and online services
every day. The title Living Knowledge reflects
the constant growth in the British Librarys
collections, our contribution to the knowledge
economy, and our staffs commitment to make
our intellectual heritage accessible to everyone,
for research, inspiration and enjoyment.

A note on Reporting and Governance

The priorities in this document are aligned to our statutory duties as set out
in the British Library Act 1972, the Public Lending Right Act 1979 and the
Legal Deposit Libraries Act 2003, as amended by The Legal Deposit Libraries
(Non-Print Works) Regulations 2013. Other priorities are agreed annually
through our management agreements with DCMS and the Chief Executive
Officer as the Librarys Accounting Officer is accountable to Parliament for
the disbursement of our Grant in Aid. The British Library Board will assess our
performance quarterly and we will publish an annual report on our progress.
Cover photo by Tony Antoniou

Living Knowledge: the British Library 2015 2023

We make our
intellectual heritage
accessible to
We
make
our
everyone, for
intellectual
research,
inspiration
and enjoyment.
heritage

Contents

accessible
to everyone,
for research,
inspiration
and enjoyment

View from inside the Kings Library at St Pancras. Photo by Tony Antoniou
2

Living Knowledge: the British Library 2015 2023

Living Knowledge: the British Library 2015 2023

Introduction
Roly Keating, Chief Executive
Five years ago, the publication of 2020 Vision
and its accompanying strategy plan for 2011
2015, Growing Knowledge was an influential
and important moment in the evolution of the
British Library. I was working in broadcasting
at the time, and remember being struck by its
acute analysis of the great digital shift that was
transforming my own industry. The very fact
of my presence in this role now is an indication
of how sharp 2020 Vision was in its portrait of
a technology revolution that blurs historic
boundaries between sectors, institutions
and professions.
Its one of many tributes due to my predecessor
Dame Lynne Brindley that the prospectus set
out in Growing Knowledge has been delivered
so effectively in the past few years. Since joining
the Library in 2012 I have had the privilege of
overseeing delivery of a succession of major
projects: the long-awaited move to Legal Deposit
collecting of born-digital UK content, including
the web; the epic programme to save the national
newspaper collection and make it accessible
in new ways; the partnership with the Qatar
Foundation to launch a digital portal of primary
sources on Gulf history and Arabic science.
None of these would have been possible without
the clarity and direction of the Librarys longterm vision.

As we refresh and expand that vision now, we

have set our sights a few years further into the
next decade. At first sight the choice of 2023 as a
planning horizon may seem a little arbitrary, but
anniversaries can sometimes have real meaning,
and in this case a focus on our 50th birthday as
an active institution serves, among other things,
as a reminder that among the family of great
institutions the British Library is still surprisingly
young: a child of the 1970s, a near-contemporary
of Microsoft and Apple, a dynamic organisation
still in some ways shaping its identity from the
multiple collections and institutions that came
together to form it.
The Library was born out of a courageous
post-war vision to create a new kind of national
institution, directly in the service of research
and innovation. At its heart were and are the
matchless collections inherited from the Library
of the British Museum. But the genius of
the Librarys founders was to combine that
Enlightenment heritage with a determination
to keep pace with science and research in all its
forms, supporting and underpinning the whole
ecology of information services in the UK.

That is why it was born with its distinctive mix

of locations in the North and South of England:
in Yorkshire, the National Lending Library for
Science and Technology, now the Librarys
document supply service, at Boston Spa in the
geographical centre of the UK truly the Library
at the heart of the system; and in London, Colin
St John Wilsons remarkable, hard-won, visionary
building, in a location that was questioned by
early commentators but which is now quite
literally at the centre of the greatest and fastestgrowing concentration of research, cultural and
information organisations anywhere in Europe,
the Knowledge Quarter of St Pancras,
Bloomsbury, Euston and Kings Cross.

Even more perhaps than Growing Knowledge,

what follows is an ambitious prospectus for
growth and continued development, driven by a
vision of the British Library in 2023 as the most
open, creative and innovative institution of its
kind in the world. These are times of historic
disruption in the whole global system of
information and publication, and it seems right
that the great knowledge institutions with their
historic remit to think and act with a view far
into the future should play a full part in shaping
the changes that lie ahead.

If this fusion of science and culture, of old

and new, of high-level research and popular
engagement, was in some ways ahead of its
time, that time has surely come now. The UK,
in common with many developed and developing
nations, is shaping an industrial strategy that
puts investment in knowledge, innovation and
creativity at the heart of its recipe for long-term,
deep-rooted economic growth. Competitive
success in such a world depends upon the
freest possible flow of ideas, inspiration and
information, and libraries not just this one,
but the whole, inter-connecting system across
the UK, public and academic are the vital
enabler of that.
This short publication lays out the key strategic
priorities for the British Library on its journey to
its 50th anniversary and beyond, and sets them in
a framework of six purposes which explain, as
simply and clearly as we can, the enduring ways
in which the public funding we receive helps to
deliver tangible public value in custodianship,
research, business, culture, learning and
international partnership.

Above: Roly Keating speaking at the Knowledge

Quarter launch at the British Library, 4 December 2014;
Right: Aerial photographs of the British Library sites at
St Pancras in London and Boston Spa in Yorkshire
4

Living Knowledge: the British Library 2015 2023

Living Knowledge: the British Library 2015 2023

The changing context

2020 Vision painted a vivid picture of what the
external environment might look like at the end
of the current decade. Four big themes emerged:
of constant and rapid change in technology; of
increasing expectations from information users
and more diverse sources of provision; of a more
collaborative, less linear approach to learning and
scholarly communications; and of a world in
which knowledge institutions will need to
reinvent and reposition themselves to create
efficiency and demonstrate their value.
Five years on, all these trends continue: the
pace of technology change has not let up;
the expectations of digital service quality
among researchers and information users have
continued to grow; collaborative research
models are becoming increasingly common.
But the landscape is complex: our observation
of the sectors we work in research, higher
education, culture, information services has
identified a number of other trends that have
matured since 2020 Vision and Growing
Knowledge were published, and which in different
ways will influence our priorities for the future:

First, it is now clear that we are living through

a revolution in the creation, analysis and
exploitation of data in all its forms, from the
vast scientific and social datasets typically
badged as big data to the innovations already
being derived from analysing digitised cultural
content in the humanities. We are only just
beginning to appreciate the distinctive and
dynamic roles that libraries have to play in
this revolution: as curators of vast and rapidly
growing collections of digitised historic items
and born-digital content; as creators and
analysers of new datasets; as experts in setting
standards, improving data and enabling links
in a complex digital landscape; and as centres
for cross-disciplinary working and business
innovation.
In December 2014 it was announced that the
British Library at St Pancras had been selected
as the location for the headquarters of the Alan
Turing Institute, a major new research centre
for data science backed by 42 million of
public investment.

At the same time, the idea of openness, in

multiple ways, is having a profound effect on
the landscape of information services and
cultural provision. The Open Data movement
has been influential in the unlocking of
publicly-held information for analysis and
re-use by researchers, businesses and the public.
In academic research, the scientific community
is working through the complex process
of making research data discoverable and
accessible. Open Access to research
publications has developed faster and more
extensively than many envisaged, with growing
volumes of publicly funded research made
available openly on the web, and a vast range
of journal content made freely available
on the premises of public libraries via the
Access to Research pilot.
This move to greater openness has a social and
ethical dimension too, with growing consensus
on the need for arts and cultural institutions to
make their collections and activities open and
accessible to everyone across the UK, whatever
their social background or geographical
location.

Related to this is a growing interest in, and

understanding of, the importance of creativity
and culture as contributors to economic
growth and wellbeing. Major recent
programmes of study into the idea of cultural
value supported by, among others, the
University of Warwick and the Arts &
Humanities Research Council have explored
the systemic links between the provision of
arts and culture and the wider health of society
and the economy.
There is a growing body of evidence to indicate
the value of libraries in this context. An
economic evaluation by Oxford Economics
published in 2013 found that the British
Library delivers an economic value of 5
for every 1 invested and generates a net
economic value of 419m for its users and
UK society as a whole. The recent Sieghart
Independent Library Report for England
highlights the value of public libraries to
local communities.

Left: Circles of Life, 2014 data visualisation by Martin

Krzywinski commissioned by British Library to illustrate
genetic similarities between humans and other animals;
Right: Nix by student team Gothulus Rift from University
of South Wales, winners of the 2014 Off the Map
competition to create virtual environments derived from
British Library collections. Based on the image of Fonthill
Abbey (far right) by John Rutter, 1823 (BL 191.e.681)
6

Living Knowledge: the British Library 2015 2023

Living Knowledge: the British Library 2015 2023

The British Librarys

purposes
A further insight emerging from that report,
which our own analysis confirms, is that at a
time when the provision of knowledge and
culture is increasingly digital and screen-based,
the value and importance of high-quality
physical spaces and experiences is growing,
not diminishing. We have seen a 10% increase
in visits to our St Pancras building in the past
12 months alone.
The more screen-based our lives, it seems,
the greater the perceived value of real human
encounters and physical artefacts: activity
in each realm feeds interest in the other. For
libraries in general, and the British Library in
particular, this means that far from there being
a simple cost-saving switch-out from physical
estates to online services, increasing investment
is certain to be needed in both realms:
alongside our still-expanding physical
collections and on-site services, the costs of
storing, preserving and making accessible the
nations rapidly growing digital collection will
continue to increase.

The British Library receives

over 1.6 million onsite
visits per year

1 Custodianship
We build, curate and preserve
the UKs national collection of
published, written and digital
content

Finally, the past five years have seen continued

and significant challenges to the budgets and
operating models of libraries in general, and
public libraries in particular, with cuts at local
authority level affecting services across the UK.
This period has also been one of innovation
and refreshment in the relationship between
the British Library and the public library
system, with new partnerships to deliver
business advice services and cultural
programming initiatives, and the incorporation
into the Library in 2013 of the Public Lending
Right, which provides payment to authors in
return for loans of their work from public
libraries. At a time of continuing change for
libraries in both technology and operating
models, our challenge is to find new ways
for the British Library to play its traditional
supporting role at the centre of the library
system as a whole, across the public and
academic sectors.

Growing Knowledge predicted correctly that by
2014 the British Librarys Grant in Aid would be
at its lowest level in real terms since the Librarys
inception. We now have a clear understanding of
the likely climate for public funding over the next
strategy period, and that further hard decisions
about investment priorities lie ahead. We do not
underestimate the scale of this challenge; but we
face it, along with the other challenges identified
above, with confidence in the case we can make
to the public, Government, philanthropic donors
and potential commercial partners for the value
we build for the UK and the importance of the
six purposes that guide us.

2 Research
We support and stimulate
research of all kinds
3 Business
We help businesses to innovate
and grow
4 Culture
We engage everyone with
memorable cultural experiences
5 Learning
We inspire young people and
learners of all ages
6 International
We work with partners around
the world to advance knowledge
and mutual understanding

Photo by Tony Antoniou

8

Living Knowledge: the British Library 2015 2023

Living Knowledge: the British Library 2015 2023

Custodianship

We build,
curate and
preserve the
UKs national
collection of
published,
written and
digital content

The National Newspaper Building in Boston Spa, home to over 750 million newspaper pages. Photo by Katie Betts
10

Living Knowledge: the British Library 2015 2023

Living Knowledge: the British Library 2015 2023

11

Custodianship
We build, curate and preserve the UKs national
collection of published, written and digital content
This is our first and core purpose, the one on
which all the others depend. Our founding Act
exhorts us to be comprehensive, and unlike a
museum collection, ours grows all the time, by
very large volumes: each month, by some 0.8
kilometres of new physical items, and 6.8 new
terabytes of digital content. Exact assessments
of the current scale of the collection are hard to
make: varying definitions of the word item
yield varying estimates of between 150 million
and 200 million items, including books, journals,
newspapers, patents, maps, prints, manuscripts,
stamps, photographs, sound recordings, digital
publications of all kinds and over 2 billion pages
of UK web content. Everything we do at the
Library is underpinned by our responsibilities as
custodians of this extraordinary resource,
guaranteeing access to it for future generations.
For these reasons, the fulfilment of this purpose
is, and is set to remain, the single biggest claim
on our resources. We depend upon, and nurture,
a wide range of specialist skills: in ingest,
cataloguing, metadata, preservation and
conservation (both physical and digital), and
the scholarly and curatorial expertise needed
to understand, interpret and develop the diverse
and complex collections we hold, increasingly
deploying techniques of digital scholarship and
conservation of a sophistication unthinkable even
a decade ago. In many of these fields we have a de
facto professional leadership role for the sector as
a whole.

Above top: Psalter of Henry VI c.1405 (British

Library, Cotton Domitian A. xvii, f. 50); Above:
Page from Mervyn Peakes Titus notebooks;
Right: Vinyl collection. Photo by Tony Antoniou
12

Living Knowledge: the British Library 2015 2023

The years ahead are set to bring new challenges.

If the last decade was dominated by our
programme to save and transform the national
newspaper collection, the next great preservation
challenge will be our audio and recorded music
collections. The British Librarys sound collection
is growing by 4,000 recordings every month. Of
the 42 different physical formats which hold our
6.5 million audio items, many will be unreadable
within about fifteen years through technical

obsolescence, and unless action is taken, many

precious recordings will be lost for ever. Our clear
and urgent goal is to digitise to preserve as much
as possible of the nations rare and unique sound
recordings, not just those in our collections but
also key items from partner collections across the
UK. In so doing, we aim to raise understanding,
useage and public enjoyment of audio heritage
more generally.

Our priorities for 2015 2023 to support our

Custodianship purpose are to:

Another partnership with the National Libraries

of Scotland and Wales and the Libraries of the
Universities of Oxford, Cambridge and Trinity
College Dublin lies at the heart of our single
greatest endeavour in digital custodianship, the
comprehensive collecting under Legal Deposit
of the UK and Irelands output of born-digital
content, including the archiving of the entire
UK web. Begun in April 2013, we are at the
earliest stages of a journey that is set, over time,
to transform what it means to be a national
memory institution. Our challenges for the next
phase of the project are to develop the scale and
accessibility of the collection, and to ensure a
proper level of investment in its future storage
and preservation.

Develop our collection management capacity

at Boston Spa in Yorkshire to offer shared
services that help deliver efficiencies for other
public organisations.

Address the growing preservation and access

challenges for our historic audio and recorded
music collections
Work with our UK Non-Print Legal Deposit
partners to develop the national collection of
born-digital content and ensure its long-term
preservation

Technology is also transforming our custodianship

of physical collections. In the past ten years, two
major new facilities have been built at our
Yorkshire base in Boston Spa, which store
and make easily retrievable vast parts of
our collections at the highest possible levels of
efficiency. Having previously developed successful
partnerships in collection management such as
the UK Research Reserve with university libraries,
we now believe that as well as continuing our
long-standing work with higher-education
partners, there are further significant efficiencies
and economies of scale to be achieved at national
scale, by investing in Boston Spa as a shared
service centre for the ingest, storage, access and
digitisation of print collections from cultural and
public sector organisations across the UK.
Living Knowledge: the British Library 2015 2023

13

Research

We support
and stimulate
research
of all kinds

Researchers using the British Librarys public spaces, 2014. Photo by Tony Antoniou
14

Living Knowledge: the British Library 2015 2023

Living Knowledge: the British Library 2015 2023

15

Research
We support and stimulate research of all kinds
A strong research base is vital to a healthy
economy, and since its foundation the British
Library has occupied a central position in the
UKs infrastructure of research and innovation.
In fulfilling our purpose as the national research
library we contribute directly to the innovation
that feeds economic growth, putting our
collections, expertise and spaces at the service
of anyone who wants to do research.
Our goal is to support the active creation of new
knowledge in any field of human enquiry, across
the sciences, social sciences, arts and humanities,
as well as cross-disciplinary research that defies
traditional boundaries. We believe that innovation
can come from any source, and are as committed
to the needs of citizen researchers and private
individuals as we are to those of academics and
career researchers.

25 million images
have been released by
the British Library under
open licence terms since
2012. Open licences allow
copyright expired material to
be reused for any purpose

Between now and 2023 we will evolve our spaces

and services to keep pace with the changing
needs of researchers. While protecting the unique
spaces that our Reading Rooms offer and which
provide an ideal environment for many, we will
facilitate new ways of working. Just as many
university libraries have transformed their spaces
over the past five years, with new environments
for collaborative or informal working, so we
have begun to create new generations of research
spaces such as the multimedia Newsroom in
St Pancras. As demand grows, we will open up
more varied study environments and ensure that
our on-site services meet our users need for the
widest possible range of content made easily and
instantly available.

These changing researcher needs are felt most

strongly in the digital space, and we will continue
to develop the quality, simplicity and use-value
of our online services. The imminent re-brand
of our document supply service as British
Library On Demand marks the beginning of a
programme of change whose ultimate goal will
be to unify all the Librarys online provision of
content and information in a single, simple service
proposition: content from the British Library and
its partners direct to your screen.
Also set to evolve in the decade ahead are the
ways in which libraries support the research
community, across all disciplines. By the end
of the next strategy period we intend that our
engagement with research excellence in the UK
will increasingly include active participation in
the research process, harnessing the power of
the data analytics revolution that is enabling
researchers to use our digital collections at scale.
This will mean building on the success of projects
such as the Mellon Foundation-funded BL Labs,
which stimulates innovative use of our digitised
collections, and also opening new collaborative
avenues through major partnerships such as the
Alan Turing Institute.

Our priorities for 2015 2023 to support our

Research purpose are to:
Ensure that the Librarys on-site facilities and
Reading Room services keep pace with the
changing needs of researchers
Develop our remote access services to become
a trusted and indispensable resource for fact
finding, research and analysis for researchers
everywhere
Leverage the Librarys collections and expertise
to drive innovation in large-scale data analytics,
for the wider benefit of UK research
Work with partners to increase the Librarys
capacity as an independent research
organisation.

Underpinning this ambition is the Librarys own

capacity and strong track record in research and
scholarly innovation as an independent research
organisation. This is an aspect of our work we
intend to develop even further in the years ahead,
in close partnership with others: the stronger we
are in our own research skills, the more effective
we believe we will be in supporting UK research
as a whole.

Above: Crossroads of Curiosity by artist David

Normal, who used images from the British Librarys
Flickr Commons collection of over 1 million
19th century book illustrations as the basis of his
installation at the 2014 Burning Man Festival in
Nevada, USA; Right: The Newsroom at St Pancras
16

Living Knowledge: the British Library 2015 2023

Living Knowledge: the British Library 2015 2023

17

Business

We help
businesses
to innovate
and grow

Kathryn Parsons speaking at the Inspiring Entrepreneurs event Internet Icons, February 2014. Photo by Luca Sage
18

Living Knowledge: the British Library 2015 2023

Living Knowledge: the British Library 2015 2023

19

Business
We help businesses to innovate and grow
The Librarys commitment to supporting industry
is enshrined in our founding Act. Our goal is
to support innovation and economic growth
across the UK through the provision of research,
patents and advice to all forms of business from
multinationals to SMEs, social enterprises and the
creative industries.
Our document supply service has served UK
industrial research and development for over
four decades, and our Business & IP Centre at
St Pancras provides advice, training and pro
bono support for new and growing businesses,
helping entrepreneurs, inventors and designers
develop, protect and commercialise their ideas,
and enabling social enterprises to increase their
impact. Since its creation in 2006 it has helped to
create an average of 550 business and 1,200 jobs
each year and generated 8.80 per 1 of public
money invested.

Since its creation in 2006

the Business & IP Centre
has helped to create an
average of 550 businesses
and 1,200 jobs per year for
the London economy and
generated 8.80 per 1
of public money invested

Looking ahead, our key priority is to secure

and grow the partnership of regional libraries
that is bringing Business & IP Centres to major
city centres beyond London. At the time of
publication, new Centres are about to open in
Liverpool and Sheffield, completing an initial
cycle of expansion that began two years ago
in Newcastle and now also comprises services
in Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester. Our
ambition is that there should be at least 20
such Centres in UK city libraries by the end
of the decade.

Cities are at the heart of growth, and within a

mile radius from our London building, in an
area bounded by Bloomsbury, Euston, Kings
Cross and St Pancras, is one of the greatest
urban clusters of knowledge-based organisations
and businesses in Europe, underpinned by
world-class transport connectivity. This insight
led to the creation of the Knowledge Quarter
partnership, which was launched in December
2014 by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Our
next challenge is to ensure that the Librarys
own campus at the heart of the Quarter adapts
to support this rapidly growing community of
creative businesses, start-ups and knowledgedriven innovators, providing spaces and services
that help these businesses to grow and achieve
commercial success.

Our priorities for 2015 2023 to support our

Business purpose are to:
Work with partners to secure funding to grow
the network of regional Business & IP Centres
to a total of 20 UK city libraries
Develop and open up our St Pancras campus
to maximise its potential for knowledge
exchange and innovation at the heart of
the Knowledge Quarter.

24+24+15765324A

Business & IP User Business Sector

n 24% Creative/Media/Tech
n 24% Professional Services
n 15% Retail/Wholesale
n 7% Education
n 6% Leisure/Hospitality
n 5% Health/Social Work

n 5% Manufacturing/
Engineering

n 3% Environment/CSR
n 2% Banking/Finance
n 5% N/A
n 4% Other

Above and below right: Inspiring Entrepreneurs

events at the British Library. Photos by Luca Sage
20

Living Knowledge: the British Library 2015 2023

Living Knowledge: the British Library 2015 2023

21

Culture

We engage
everyone with
memorable
cultural
experiences

Late event at the British Library as part of Propaganda season, 2013. Photo by Tom Lewis Russell
22

Living Knowledge: the British Library 2015 2023

Living Knowledge: the British Library 2015 2023

23

Culture
We engage everyone with memorable cultural experiences
For many people, the Librarys cultural purpose
is the aspect of its mission they value most highly.
The inherent cultural and artistic value of the
Librarys collections is beyond price a vast
compendium of the literary and intellectual arts of
mankind, including countless items of exceptional
rarity and beauty: rare books and maps; precious
early photographs; unique sound recordings; the
archives of literary, musical, political and scientific
figures; a manuscript collection containing
probably the greatest surviving collection of
medieval art in the country.
The role of those who shape our public
programme and cultural engagement activities is
to create events, experiences, talks, exhibitions
and performances that interpret this collection in
ways that reach, delight and engage the widest
possible public. There is also an increasing role in
supporting the creative industries to re-interpret
content and data.
Our challenge in the decade ahead is to help even
more people discover and enjoy the Librarys
exhibition and events programme, and to be even
more creative and diverse in the range of artistic
experiences we commission and co-create. We
want the Library to be a hub of ideas, debate,

discussion, dialogue and experiment. In the short

term, we will be inventive and unpredictable in
the use we make of our existing spaces and
buildings; in the longer term we will seek to raise
support to expand and improve our galleries to
allow us to show more of what we have, in better
conditions, and in versatile spaces that let us do
justice to our rapidly growing digital, audio and
multimedia collections.
Equally important is sharing our collections and
creativity with audiences across the UK and
beyond. Our collecting remit means we hold
unique content of relevance to almost every
locality in the UK, from historic maps to more
than two centuries of local newspapers. We know
from the huge success of Lindisfarne Gospels
Durham, during the summer of 2013, how
significant a loan from our collection can be when
situated within a different geographical or cultural
context or displayed with related material: we will
seek to develop an expanded programme of loans,
collaborations and exhibitions, working with
public libraries and other partners. And we will
look beyond the UK to ensure that audiences
overseas have increasing opportunities to see
and appreciate items from our collection.

Our priorities for 2015 2023 to support our

Cultural purpose are to:
Grow the profile, diversity and creative impact
of the Librarys cultural activities, both on-site
and online
Develop an increased programme of loans,
touring exhibitions and digital collaborations,
with public libraries and others, that open
our collections to new audiences across the
UK and internationally.

Above top: Lindisfarne Gospels Durham exhibition;

Above: Knight v Snail II: Battle in the Margins (from the
Gorleston Psalter, England (Suffolk), 13101324, Add
MS 49622, f. 193v.) from our Medieval Manuscripts
blog which won the 2014 Arts and Culture National UK
Blog Award; Right: Poster artwork by Jamie Hewlett for
Comics Unmasked: Art and Anarchy in the UK
24

Living Knowledge: the British Library 2015 2023

Living Knowledge: the British Library 2015 2023

25

Learning

We inspire
young people
and learners
of all ages

A-Level students taking part in a Terror and Wonder exhibition workshop, 2014. Photo by Richard Eaton
26

Living Knowledge: the British Library 2015 2023

Living Knowledge: the British Library 2015 2023

27

Learning
We inspire young people and learners of all ages
The Library and its collections have a potent and
unique educational value for life-long learners as
well as school students. At a time when people
increasingly experience the world and acquire
knowledge through digital screens, an encounter
with an original handwritten document or
primary source can have an almost magical power
and aura.
We know the value of such experiences, and have
sought in recent years to maximise the numbers
of children and young people who are able to visit
the Library in person for educational visits. An
important part of our mission is to inspire the
researchers of tomorrow, and we aim not just to
tell stories but encourage a spirit of questioning
and enquiry.
Our learning mission extends beyond schools
and those in formal education. We actively seek
to engage with local communities. Our Learning
pages are already the most used parts of our
website, and though usually devised with the close
support of teachers and educators, they frequently
succeed in reaching people far beyond their target
audience. For many of us, the desire and need
to learn stretches throughout our lives, and
the British Library is strongly placed to fulfil
that need.

As we shape our learning priorities for the next

decade, we will need to address issues of scale and
resource in our on-site offer. Our reach to school
students grew in 2014 to a record 32,826, but our
ability to expand further is sharply constrained by
the capacity and nature of our dedicated learning
spaces a purpose that was not seen as a priority
when the building was first designed. Similarly,
though the success of occasional family days has
shown strong appetite, we have not to date been
able to build a consistent offer for families with
children. As part of our programme of
improvement and transformation of our St Pancras
estate, we will seek a step-change in our capacity to
serve children, families and the local community.

Our priorities for 2015 2023 to support our

Learning purpose are to:
Improve and expand our on-site capacity to
grow the numbers of school students, young
people, families and local communities able to
engage with our collections
Expand the range of teaching resources and
primary source material available online.

In the online space, we will seek support to invest

further in those parts of our site that deliver
highest value to learners, including Discovering
Literature, which presents selected digitised
primary sources relating to key works of English
literature. The site has had over 300,000 unique
visits in its first six months. Our goal is to expand
it to cover more of the canon of English literature
and establish its profile and reputation as an
indispensable resource for learners worldwide.

In the last three years our

reach to school students has
grown by 70% to 32,826
for onsite visits and doubled
to 3 million for online visits.
Above top: Teachers conference held in partnership
with the English and Media Centre; Above: Research
skills workshops aimed at Primary students. Photos by
Richard Eaton; Right: 18th- and 19th-century authors
featured on our Discovering Literature website
28

Living Knowledge: the British Library 2015 2023

Living Knowledge: the British Library 2015 2023

29

International

We work
with partners
around
the world
to advance
knowledge
and mutual
understanding

Africa Writes Festival, July 2013. Photo by Benjamin Elwyn

30

Living Knowledge: the British Library 2015 2023

Living Knowledge: the British Library 2015 2023

31

International
We work with partners around the world to
advance knowledge and mutual understanding
The international community of libraries is a
powerful and resilient network of institutions
with shared values and missions. This is an
ancient idea as well as a modern one: scholarship
has always sought, sometimes against the odds,
to reach across boundaries of language, politics,
faith and geography. The digital era has delivered
tools and platforms that are bringing this network
together in compelling new ways. Initiatives
such as Europeana and the Digital Public Library
of America unite disparate collections across
continents and nations, and similar projects
are emerging in both developed and developing
nations.
The British Library has a distinctive and
important role to play alongside others in this
global system. For reasons of history cultural,
imperial, mercantile our collection is perhaps
the most international of its kind anywhere in
the world, with rare or unique items reflecting
all major language groups and faith traditions.
We have both growing opportunity and growing
responsibility to use the potential of digital to
increase access for people across the world to
the intellectual heritage that we safeguard.
Amid the many calls on our international
resources in the next strategic period, we will
focus especially on those parts of the world
where for historic reasons our collections are
strongest, not least in South Asia and the Middle
East. Our Memorandum of Understanding with

the Indian Government sets out a bold vision of

collaboration which we look forward to fulfilling,
and our partnership with the Qatar Foundation
is set to deliver a vast and expanding resource of
digitised primary sources relating to Gulf history
and Arabic science.

Our priorities for 2015 2023 to support our

International purpose are to:

Closer to home, our relationship with partners

in continental Europe has deepened with our
close involvement in Europeanas 1914 1918
project, which movingly unites unique content
from formerly combatant nations. We will work
closely with the national libraries of Europe both
to meet public appetite for engagement with
European culture, seen in the growing success of
events such as European Literature Night, and
to ensure that our shared collections play a full
role in the emerging global family of distributed
digital libraries.

Take a professional leadership role in the

national library network of Europe to
contribute to the development of a global
distributed digital library

Increase our engagement in those regions of

the world, including South Asia and the Middle
East, whose cultures and histories are reflected
most strongly in the Librarys collections

Grow our capacity to support other institutions

whose collections are at risk from war or civil
emergency.

Finally, at a time when wars and civil emergencies

have too frequently put archives and library
collections at risk, the work we do, often with
limited resources, to support fellow institutions
during and after conflicts is becoming more
urgent than ever a global dimension of our
professional leadership role. The Endangered
Archives Programme, which we run with
generous funding from the Arcadia Fund,
has just reached its tenth anniversary, and
represents a model on which we hope to build
for the future.

Left above: Folio from the Mewar Ramayana, a

manuscript split between the UK and India, digitally
reunited in 2014; Left: Magpie from the Nat alHayawa- n by Aristotle and Ibn Bakhtishu, c.1220 AD
(British Library, Or. 2784), digitised as part of the British
Librarys Qatar Foundation partnership; Right above:
Endangered Archives: Bamum script and archives
project; Right below: Endangered Archives: digital
documentation of manuscript collection in Gangtey
32

Living Knowledge: the British Library 2015 2023

Living Knowledge: the British Library 2015 2023

33

Enabling the vision

Delivery of the prospectus set out above will
require further change in the way we work and
organise ourselves and in the business models we
develop to deliver our purposes. Major efficiencies
have already been achieved; many more will
need to be found, and our fundraising activities
and commercial services will continue to grow.
Internally, the culture change begun some years
ago is already improving our ability to collaborate
and work effectively both within the organisation
and with our external partners.

year, is founded on a new statement of the values

that will guide us as an organisation through the
coming years of change. For those inside and
outside the Library, we want to be seen as
a professional community who:

In the spirit of the One British Library

programme of staff consultation we conducted in
2013, we will continue to focus on simplification
of our internal structures and processes, for the
benefit not just of our staff but also the many
partners and stakeholders who work with us.
Where possible, the priorities identified above
will form part of larger, long-term programmes,
including major transformation projects for our St
Pancras estate and our audience-facing digital offer.

Act with openness and honesty

Our staff are the heart and soul of all of this: it

is their expertise and dedication that makes the
Librarys services so valued by our users, and
their resilience that will make the future changes
possible, through a period when further change is
inevitable. Our new People Strategy, adopted last

Put users at the heart of everything we do

Listen, innovate and adapt to a changing world
Treat everyone with respect and compassion
Embrace equality, fairness and diversity
Collaborate to do more than we could by
ourselves
Supporting all of this is our commitment to
accountability and transparency. Our Board
provides strong governance for the Librarys
executive leadership team, and has committed
to an increased programme of Board paper
publication. We also intend that the clear
framework of purposes set out in this
document will allow us to measure ourselves
better, improving both our internal business
planning and our accountability to the
public whose funding and support makes
the continued existence and success of this
great institution possible.

Right: A two-minute snapshot of data from the

British Librarys book tracking and delivery system
on 14 April 2014
34

Living Knowledge: the British Library 2015 2023

Living Knowledge sets out the

British Librarys vision for its future
development as it looks ahead
to 2023, the year of its fiftieth
anniversary as the national library of
the United Kingdom. It explains how
the Library delivers public value in
custodianship, research, business,
culture, learning and international
partnership and fulfils its mission
to make our intellectual heritage
accessible to everyone, for research,
inspiration and enjoyment.
Roly Keating
Chief Executive, British Library

www.bl.uk