Historical Overview of British Library

The British Museum began collecting newspapers systematically during the 1820s. By the end of the nineteenth century, however, there was no storage space left, and in the British Museum Bill of 1900 it was proposed that the collections of provincial newspapers should be disposed of. Fortunately, this aroused considerable opposition, and instead a site was purchased at Colindale in the north London suburbs and a Newspaper Repository was built. Opening in 1905, this became the home of English provincial, Welsh, Scottish, and Irish newspapers. London newspapers and overseas titles remained in the main British Museum building at Great Russell Street in Bloomsbury. There were no facilities for readers, so a weekly transport system consisting, at first, of a horse-drawn wagon, and from 1913 a motor van, delivered newspaper volumes to readers in the Newspaper Reading Room in the British Museum.

After about twenty years the Repository was full. In 1928 the Royal Commission on National Museums and Galleries recommended that a purpose-built newspaper library, with facilities for readers, should be constructed at Colindale. This was completed in May 1932. The new British Museum Newspaper Library contained a public reading room with space for fifty-six readers, a bindery, and an additional storage building on six floors. All the British Museum's newspapers were transferred to Colindale, with the exception of pre-1801 London newspapers and newspapers in oriental languages.

The British Museum Newspaper Repository

The Repository building was destroyed by bombing on 20 October 1940, along with an estimated 6,000 volumes of English provincial and Irish newspapers, mainly from the late 19th century. Two temporary buildings were erected at the end of the War to provide replacement storage space, and these are still in use today. Plans for a new building to replace the Repository were begun in 1943, but not put into effect until 1957 when the 'new wing' was finally completed. In the last few decades the Reading Rooms have been extended, a purpose-built microfilming unit and a specially designed microfilm reading area have been opened. In 1996, a further reading room extension, known as the New Reading Room, was opened which includes facilities which provide networked access to online newspapers and newspapers on CD-ROM. In 1973, the Newspaper Library, along with the other library departments of the British Museum, became part of the newly-formed British Library.

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