The British Library
The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom, and it contains almost 200 million items. Before 1973 it was part of the British Museum, but in 1997 the stock of various items which had come to be the responsibility of the library began to be moved to the new facility on the Euston Road, near to St Pancras’ Railway Station.
The library was purpose built to a design by Colin St John Wilson and was formally opened by Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II in June 1988. It functions as the Library of the British Museum, the Patent Office Library, the British Library Document Supply Centre and the India Office Library.
A copy of every book published in the UK is required to be submitted to the British Library collection, but the library also collects sound archives, images, and newspapers, and more recently began to archive websites based in the UK.
Of interest to the student of early Christianity in the British Isles, the library exhibits the Lindisfarne Gospels, and the St Cuthbert Gospel. It also houses the Egerton Gospel and the Gospel of John papyrus, some of the earliest preserved papyrus records of the Christian Scriptures, dating to the 2nd and 3rd centuries.