The British Library and its international collections

Abstract

The British Library has one of the largest and most important international library research collections in the world. This paper discusses the background to the creation of the Library’s international collections and the Library’s international purpose as part of its Living Knowledge vision. It reviews the range of international collaborations and partnerships which the British Library has developed to digitise and share the international collections and make them widely available. The paper considers a range of individual case studies which look at projects of different scale, with different funding models and designed to deliver different outcomes. The paper also considers the key challenges in developing international partnerships and the future direction of our work to develop a shared digital future for international library collections.