This article below by Guardian Journalist Stuart Jeffries quite amusingly illustrates the problems of having to hold a copy of evertything puiblished in the nation, and the many problem in relation to storage of such a vast amount of articles, books, documents and other information.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2007...4/architecture
The British Library has storage facilities in Woolwich, Colindale (Newspapers) and at Boston Spa near Wetherby in West Yorkshire (which is being massively redeveloped to hold more books and newspapers) as well as it's massive site on Euston Road. The Library is also home to a book preservation, conservation and repair centre, as well as a national audio and music library.
http://www.bl.uk/careers/locations.html
http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/whats.../homepage.html
http://www.bl.uk/reshelp/bldept/soun...ndarchive.html
http://www.worldarchitecturenews.com...pload_id=10946
British Library new planned storage facilities - Boston Spa site
It's also not just the British Library (14 million books and over 150 million items), the Bodleian (11 million books) has had to invest in a massive new storage facility in Swindon (as part of a massive redevelopment of the entire library) whilst the other deposit libaries - National Library of Scotland (7 million books), National Library of Wales (4 million books), Cambridge University (12 million books), Trinity College Dublin (5 million books) are also increasingly having to invest in ever larger storage facilities, and similar investments are having to be made by major libraries and archives across the globe.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/b...tle-space.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/wiltshir...00/9062875.stm
Bodleian Libraries New Automated Storage Facilities in Swindon (below)
The UK National Archive which is based at Kew in London (below)
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/
The National Archive (pictured above) has even started using the space in a Cheshire salt mine to store some of it's vast array of records.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/gallery...620904&index=0
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7911124.stm
http://www.deepstore.com/
• Video Link
It's also not just books the
British Film Institute (BFI) had to build a vast specialist storage facility for it's highly inflammable Acetate and Nitrate Film Stores in Warwickshire
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/f...ollection.html
http://beta.bfi.org.uk/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england...herts-13539340
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BFI_National_Archive
BBC Archive - which has since moved to a new building at Perivale in London
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/abouttheb...entre-at.shtml
• Video Link
Picture below -
The British Library's New Additional Storage Building (ASB) in Boston Spa (Near Wetherby, West Yorkshire in England), is seen during the installation of automated racking. The British Library is re-housing part of its collection in new facilities that will hand responsibility for the storage and retrieval of seven million items to a robotic crane rather than a librarian.
• Video Link
Adrian Smales (Flickr)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/asmales...7622974907620/
