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| Philatelic Research at the British Library | ||
Introduction The three key elements of the Curator’s job are: to collect, to preserve and to make available. In many ways that of making available is the most difficult to achieve and so I welcome this opportunity to describe the considerable resources available to researchers in philately and postal history at the British Library. The British Library is the National Library of the United Kingdom and while it was established only (by the British Library Act, 1972) in 1973, its collections originate from a number of institutions, significantly for the philatelist from the British Museum library departments and from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in the form of the India Office Library and Records. The size, range and coverage of these national collections of international importance is difficult to get across, indeed one would have to spend a lifetime in understanding their inestimable significance to world culture and scholarship. One is forced to quote numbers, give examples of classes of material and describe a few individual items of special significance. In its last Annual Report to 31st March, 2004 the British Library’s holdings were given at 92,522,446 items, but even this does not give the true number as serials (periodicals, newspapers, auction catalogues etc) are counted by the number of catalogue entries. This means, for example, that The London Philatelist the journal of The Royal Philatelic Society London has one catalogue entry but is currently in its 113th volume or about 1,300 individual numbers. A brief survey of classes of material may be useful. Monographs 11,223, 249 Serial titles 836,328 Newspaper titles 55,718 Manuscripts 312,263 India Office Records 391,374 Philatelic items 8,220,994 Cartographic items 4,301,034 Music scores 1,590,029 Sound disks 1,285,914 Sound tape items 221,967 Videograms 25,193 Prints and Drawings 32,597 Photographs 251,049 Patent specifications 53,483,537 Reports on microfilm 10,115,000 Theses 176,200 Total 92,522,446 Next > | ||
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