Direct to Full Text Report (7 pages; PDF)
The British Library makes an essential contribution to the UK’s intellectual, social, economic and cultural life, underpinning key sectors of education and research.
Here are a Few Examples of the Statistics Included in the Report:
£4 million
Value of digitising 4 million pages of historic newspapers in partnership with brightsolid online publishing. Our aim is to digitise 40 million pages over the next ten years with a value of £40 million.£12 million
Value of digitising 250,000 historic books and making them freely available to users in partnership with Google.4.1 million
Physical items were consulted in the Reading Rooms in 2010/11, the highest number ever recorded. The use of electronic resources in the Reading Rooms also reached a new record, increasing by 26,5007 million
Individual catalogue searches over the past year.16 million
Bibliographic recordshave been made accessible to the national and international library community.The British Library is a leading contributor to the Europeana programme, which gives digital access to 20 million images, texts, sounds and videos in partnership with other European cultural institutions. A new three-year project will build an online collection of 400,000 historic items from the First World War.