Image taken from http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/715713.
The London Library is the world's largest independent lending library and has over one million books on over 15 miles of open-access shelving. Founded in 1841, this library allows circulation of its rare books- its patrons regularly take home first editions from the mid 1800s and before.
The London Library is the world's largest independent lending library and has over one million books on over 15 miles of open-access shelving. Founded in 1841, this library allows circulation of its rare books- its patrons regularly take home first editions from the mid 1800s and before.
The library has quite a conservative policy on weeding, as found in the Library's introduction: "It is a central tenet of the Library that, as books are never entirely superseded, and therefore never redundant, the collections should not be weeded of material merely because it is old, idiosyncratic or unfashionable: except in the case of exact duplication, almost nothing has ever been discarded from the Library's shelves."
Because of this, the library adds a new half mile of shelving every three years or so. Over 30,000 of the rarest books in the collection are housed in the Anstruther Wing, a new building completed in 1995.The latest space addition was aquired in 2004 and even today the library is working on a development project to ensure adequate space will be available in the future.
A brief history of the London Library
View a short video on the London Library
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