London Library - Collections

Collections

The library's collections, which range from the 16th century to the present day, are strong within the fields of literature, fiction, fine and applied art, architecture, history, biography, philosophy, religion, topography, and travel. The social sciences are more lightly covered. Pure and natural sciences, technology, medicine and law are not within the library's purview, although it has some books in all of those fields; books on their histories are normally acquired. Periodicals and annuals on a wide range of subjects are also held in the collections.

In 1944, some stock was lost to bomb damage and in 1970 its few incunabula were sold. This apart, the library has (except for some duplicates) retained all items acquired since its foundation. The library now holds more than one million items, and in 2011 it acquired 8,123 books and periodicals. 95 per cent of the collection is housed on open shelves and 97 per cent is available for loan, either on-site or through the post. The Library is the largest lending library in Europe.

It is a central tenet of the Library that, as books are never entirely superseded, and therefore never redundant, the collections should not be weeded of material merely because it is old, idiosyncratic or unfashionable: except in the case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 occasional duplicate volumes, almost nothing has ever been discarded from the Library shelves.

The library also subscribes to many ejournals and other online databases. All post-1950 acquisitions are searchable on the on-line catalogue, and pre-1950 volumes continue to be added daily as part of the Retrospective Cataloguing Project.