Please visit Reader Registration in St Pancras or Boston Spa to be issued with your Reader Pass.

We’re now able to issue photographic passes again, and these will last for one year. The pass will allow you to use our Reading Rooms for personal study, use our free Wi-Fi, access items on the shelves and order collection items to consult.

If you have previously been issued with a temporary paper pass, you will need to revisit Reader Registration to exchange it for a photographic pass.

Please note you need to be over 18 to get a Reader Pass, and you must bring identification with you when you visit Reader Registration.

Please visit Reader Registration in St Pancras or Boston Spa to be issued with your Reader Pass. This pass will last for one year. Your pass will allow you to use our Reading Rooms for personal study, use our free Wi-Fi, access items on the shelves and order collection items to consult.

Please bring your expired pass with you to Reader Registration, as your new pass will need to carry your expired Reader number to order any collection items.

If you have previously been issued with a temporary paper pass, you will need to revisit Reader Registration to exchange it for a photographic pass.

You must bring identification with you when you visit Reader Registration.

Please visit Reader Registration in St Pancras or Boston Spa to be issued with your Reader Pass. This pass will last for one year. Your pass will allow you to use our Reading Rooms for personal study, use our free Wi-Fi, access items on the shelves and order collection items to consult.

Please bring your pre-registration confirmation email with you to Reader Registration, as your photographic pass will need to carry your Reader number to order any collection items.

If you have previously been issued with a temporary paper pass, you will need to revisit Reader Registration to exchange it for a photographic pass.

You must bring identification with you when you visit Reader Registration.

At the moment we can only issue one-year photographic passes.

Whether you are renewing, replacing or getting a new pass, please bring:

• a state-issued photo ID, printed with your photo, name and address (driving license or national ID card) or
• two separate documents, one showing your name and one showing your home address.

Types of documents we can accept include:

• State-issued documents e.g. passport
• Bills and financial documents
• NHS documentation e.g. NHS appointment letters and prescriptions
• DVLA documentation or correspondence
• Residency e.g. tenancy agreements.

Please note:

1. We can accept original documents, photos, online versions or scanned copies of the documents above. Please ensure all text is legible
2. Some driving licenses and national identity cards do not show your address. If yours doesn't, we can't accept it as your sole ID
3. All documents need to be valid, or the paperwork issued within the last 12 months
4. If necessary, it's up to you to provide official translations for foreign documents
5. If you would like to bring a guest aged over 18 into our Reading Rooms, they will also need a Reader Pass. If you require a carer or have an adult dependent, they will also need a Reader Pass.
6. Unfortunately, we can't issue a Reader Pass without seeing the ID listed above. Without a Reader Pass, you won't be able to use our Reading Rooms.

At the moment you can only get a Reader Pass by visiting the Reader Registration in St Pancras or Boston Spa, and you can’t pre-register online.

With this Reader Pass you will be able to use the Reading Rooms for personal study, use our free Wi-Fi, access items on the shelves, and order collection items to consult.

You must bring identification with you when you visit Reader Registration.

You can continue using your temporary paper pass until it expires.

If you have a temporary white paper pass but you need to order collection items, you can revisit Reader Registration to exchange it for a photographic pass before its expiry date.

If you have a temporary blue paper pass you can continue to use it until it expires, and then exchange it for a photographic pass.

With a photographic pass you will be able to use the Reading Rooms for personal study, use our free Wi-Fi, access items on the shelves, and order collection items to consult.

You must bring identification with you when you visit Reader Registration, even when replacing your temporary pass. You may want to consider visiting the Reader Registration in the afternoons, when it is likely to be quieter.

All of our Reading Rooms are open during their normal opening hours, for personal study, and for accessing books and other items from our collection, subject to availability and certain restrictions. See FAQs below for more details. Digital and audio-visual collections are not currently available.

To use our Reading Rooms you will need your free Reader Pass.

The cyber-attack caused substantial damage that is complex and challenging to repair, and includes the installation of a completely new computing infrastructure for the entire Library.

As we approach completion of that first phase of work, our CEO, Sir Roly Keating, has shared a new blog with information about our ongoing recovery, and we’re able to give an update on the service improvements you can expect over the coming months.

Recent improvements

• Improved Reader Registration process. If you have renewed or got a new Reader Pass since the cyber-attack last year, you can now get a full Reader Pass. This means anyone with a Reader Pass can order collection items in the Reading Rooms
• Improved collection item access. We’ve now restarted the transfer of collection items between our two sites, which has expanded the range of collection materials available for you to order. This means Readers in St Pancras can access material stored in Boston Spa, and vice versa. This has restored access to material that can be retrieved manually from our stores in Boston Spa, but as we are currently unable to access our automated stores, not everything is available. You can use our online catalogue to identify the items you need and their location, but please check their availability before visiting the Reading Rooms by contacting our Reference Services team. If your item is being transferred from another site please allow two working days for delivery. You still need to visit in person and complete paper forms to order collection items at the moment.

Further improvements and restoration of service you can expect in the coming months:

• Access to more collection items held in Boston Spa – July Material stored in our Additional Storage Building in Boston Spa should be available by the end of July. Access to materials held in the National Newspaper Building is more complex and is likely to take longer. In the meantime, you can find a wide range of newspaper titles available in microform in the Newsroom at St Pancras.
• Digital collections acquired through Non-Print Legal Deposit (NPLD) – August We expect NPLD materials deposited prior to the cyber-attack (October 2023), including e-journals and e-publications, to be available in some form by August. We’re continuing to explore options for collecting and storing items deposited after October 2023.
• Learning websites and digitised manuscripts – September We hope to restore our unique collection of digitised manuscripts, and our popular Learning resources, including Discovering Literature, by September.

There are a few ways to explore what's in our collection and find out what's currently available:

• You can now use a searchable online version of our main catalogue. This catalogue contains records of the majority of our printed collection and some freely available online resources
• You can consult printed catalogues in the Reading Rooms
• You can work with our Reading Room staff on-site to search for items in our special collections, such as archives and manuscripts
• You can search Jisc Library Hub Discover, WorldCat, The National Archives and The Archives Hub for records of items held in our collection, and see if they are held elsewhere.

The following table can help you find the collection types you require:

We're working hard to expand access to all of our collection as soon as we can, and will update our website and social media channels with more information.

Online ordering is not currently possible, so you will need to come to the Reading Rooms to order your collection items. Please contact our Reference Services Team before you visit to check what you need will be available, by contacting us.

The online catalogue is a searchable version of our main catalogue of books and other printed material. It contains records relating to the following collection item categories:

To order an item you'll need to place a manual order in one of our Reading Rooms by completing a paper order form. Our staff can help you with this.

To identify the items you need, you can use our online catalogue to search for the item you require. If a record is marked ‘Not available’, this means the item is unavailable at the moment. If a record is marked ‘Should be available’, you will be able to see a shelfmark reference. You can take note of the shelfmark, because you will need it to place a manual order in the Reading Rooms by completing a paper order form.

We can’t guarantee that items marked ‘Should be available’ are available to order; they may be in use by another Reader or restricted for other reasons. To check the availability before you visit, contact our Reference Services team by contacting us.

In the Reading Rooms you can also consult our printed catalogues, which contain items not currently included in the online catalogue.

To see if items are held elsewhere, you can search Jisc Library Hub Discover, WorldCat, The National Archives and The Archives Hub.

Orders for same-day delivery close at 16.00.

Before you visit, you can use our online catalogue to search for the items you require. If a record is marked ‘Not available’, this means the item is unavailable at the moment. If a record is marked ‘Should be available’, you will be able to see a shelfmark reference. Please take note of the shelfmark as you will need it to place a manual order in the Reading Rooms by completing a paper order form.

We can’t guarantee that items marked ‘Should be available’ are available to order; they may be in use by another Reader or restricted for other reasons. To check the availability before you visit, contact our Reference Services team by contacting us.

We will endeavour to deliver your order within 70 minutes. However, please bear in mind that in some cases it may take longer if our staff have to do extra checks to ensure that the items you ordered are available. Orders for same-day delivery close at 16.00.

We’ve now restarted the transfer of collection items between our two sites, which has expanded the range of collection materials available for you to order. This means Readers in Boston Spa can access material stored in St Pancras, and vice versa. This has restored access to material that can be retrieved manually from our stores in Boston Spa, but as we are currently unable to access our automated stores, not everything is available.

If your item is being transferred from another site please allow two working days for delivery. You still need to visit in person and complete paper forms to order collection items at the moment.

We recommend contacting our Boston Spa Reading Room team before you visit to check what you need will be available, by emailing customer@bl.uk.

We plan to restore access to more collection items stored in Boston Spa, including those held in our automated stores, over the coming months.

The majority of special collections held at St Pancras are now available, including restricted material. Our specialist archive and manuscripts catalogue is not online at the moment, please contact us using LibAnswers or LibChat (via the green Ask Us tab on the right of the catalogue) so we can help you find what you need and advise on its availability.

Restricted material can only be consulted in the following Reading Rooms, depending on the collection type:

Asian & African: India Office Records and Private Papers, Asian and African Collections (manuscripts and printed items) and the Visual Arts collection (by appointment in the Print Room)

Manuscripts: Restricted western manuscripts

Rare Books & Music: Restricted printed books and restricted music collections

Maps: Restricted maps collections

To access restricted material you must have a Reader Pass issued after 21 March 2024. If your pass was issued before this date, please visit Reader Registration to replace it.

You will need to submit a request either in person in one of the special collections Reading Rooms (Asian & African, Manuscripts, Rare Books & Music, and Maps), or via LibAnswers or LibChat (via the green Ask Us tab on the right of the catalogue).

If you wish to consult Select manuscripts in the Manuscripts Reading Room, you will need to provide a “Letter of introduction”. Please ask via LibAnswers or LibChat if you need more information about this.

Approval to consult restricted material may take up to 3 working days (excluding Saturdays) and making an item available might take longer. We therefore recommend you plan your visit to the Reading Rooms carefully.

Please note self-service photography is not permitted for restricted items.

Once your request to access special collections is approved, we will let you know how to order and view your item

Our audio-visual collections are currently unavailable.

The catalogue is a snapshot as of April 2023, and we will not be adding any new records to it for the time being. Please see the table above for details of the categories of collection data it includes.

Yes - we will ultimately bring back a fully integrated catalogue with online ordering and other features. However, this will take some time to implement so in the meantime we will work iteratively to improve the service we can offer to Readers using this version of the main catalogue as a basis.

You can order up to six collection items per day. Please note that as usual it is possible for only four manuscripts to be in process at any one time.

Please speak to a member of our team in the Reading Rooms for help with this.

We hope to implement a system for this soon but unfortunately it's not possible at the moment.

Yes, you can reserve your items for up to three working days. Please speak to a member of our team in the Reading Room for help with this.

That may be possible, please speak to a member of our team in the Reading Room for help with this.

Yes, you can access collection items held on the open shelves in the Reading Rooms.

Most of our digital collection and electronic resources are currently unavailable, but some freely available online resources are included in our online catalogue.

You can also access the resources below from home without a Reader Pass:

• search HathiTrust or Archive.org for older and out-of-copyright digitised material
• use Google Books to search a huge range of digitised content from our collection
• access 1 million images of items from our collection on Flickr
• search millions of newspaper articles via the British Newspaper Archives
• explore Artstor's digital library.

We plan to restore access to a range of other digital and digitised content over the next few months.

The following services in the Reading Rooms are currently unavailable:

• digital content including electronic resources
• online and advance ordering
• Reading Room PCs.

To help us maintain collection security, we need to monitor the collection items consulted in the specialist Reading Rooms.

We would appreciate if you can return these items to the Issue Desk 45 minutes before closing time.

Please ask our staff in the Reading Rooms who will be able to assist you.

Yes, prints, drawings, photographs and related visual material held in the Visual Art collection can be consulted in the Print Room located in the Asian and African Reading Room. The Print Room is open by appointment only on Monday and Friday between 10.30 and 12.30. Please contact the Visual Arts team via email (apac-prints@bl.uk) to check the availability of required items and to book an appointment. Please note that advanced booking is required.

Our online catalogue now provides access to digital doctoral theses held in UK institutional repositories. To access these documents, search for a thesis and then click on a title of interest to view the full details for that work. The link can be found under the section labelled "View Online - External Resource Available" (in green) just above the "I want this" section (in red) at the bottom of the page.

The Eccles Institute has unfortunately decided to suspend the Visiting Fellowship programme for 2024-25. We know that this will be disappointing, and this decision has not been taken lightly. We anticipate that there will be some opportunities for Eccles Institute support after key Library services have resumed.

At the moment, most of our digital collection and electronic resources are unavailable, but you can use alternate online resources including our Flickr and Images Online sites. You can also find digitised resources on a number of our blogs, and on the IDP website.

We can supply hi res images for all images that are available on Images Online, and are working on adding some additional images without captions/metadata that have been kindly given by previous users.

If you have any questions about the image you'd like to use please email licensing@bl.uk and we'll come back to you as soon as we can.

If you have previously been supplied images by the Library please get in touch as we can redistribute them to users who may need them.

All requests in our system will be cancelled, with the option for you to reapply once our service is up and running, should items still be required.

Yes, you can continue to return your items to us when no longer required.

Renewal charges will not apply, so you can keep hold of your items if you need them for longer and send them back to us when no longer required.

We are now offering an interim, manual interlibrary loan and scan from print service to business account holders. We’ll be contacting account holders with more details about this service.