Sir Frank Francis

Sir Frank Francis0:00

This download is the only extract the BBC has of this edition of Desert Island Discs. The presenter was Roy Plumley.

Sir Frank Francis0:08

So Frank, the British Museum Library, roughly how many volumes?

Presenter0:12

Roughly eight and a half million volumes.

Presenter0:15

occupying, say, about a hundred and sixty, seventy miles of shelves.

Presenter0:19

How does this rank in the world as far as size is concerned?

Presenter0:23

Well, it's probably less it's certainly less than the Lenin Library in Moscow and the Library of Congress in Washington.

Presenter0:30

You have visited most of the great libraries in the world? Yes, most of them. The British Museum Library isn't confined to books in English.

Presenter0:37

By no manner of means I think it could be said to have

Presenter0:40

representative of all languages, both old and new, on its shelves. It's not even confined to books. There are also maps and manuscripts and indeed stamps, I believe. Oh, yes, yes, and music.

Presenter0:51

When was the library formed?

Presenter0:53

It was formed in seventeen hundred fifty three as a result of the will of a court physician named Sir Hans Sloane.

Presenter1:01

There's the system of copyright deposit. By law one copy of every book published in the country is is given to the British Museum. Has this been in operation since the beginning? Yes, it has. Uh it came with the

Presenter1:14

Royal Library, which which was given to the British Museum in seventeen hundred and fifty seven

Presenter1:18

Uh but it was not pressed very rigorously for the first hundred years of of the museum's um history. But after that, roughly a hundred years ago, it has been pretty rigorously applied. How many new books come into the library every year?

Presenter1:34

Something like

Presenter1:35

Ninety to a hundred thousand. That's books alone, of course. Now to keep a catalogue of eight and a half million books with all these annual editions, to keep this catalogue up to date must be a daunting task. It is a big task, not daunting, and of course not quite so terrifying to those inside the building as it seems to be to those outside it.

Presenter1:53

Anybody with a valid reason for doing so can apply for a reader's ticket and ask to consult any book in the library. Yes. This is something on which we pride ourselves, and there is a great sort of romantic attraction about this, that you can go in and ask to see the greatest rarities and

Presenter2:09

Be given them. Mhm. How many readers' desks are there in that vast reading room?

Presenter2:14

There are roughly four hundred and fifty desks in the reading room itself, but there are of course additional students' rooms and there's the rare books reading room.

Presenter2:23

which houses about a hundred and fifty people. I suppose one could say that All that is

Sir Frank Francis2:27

Distinguished British authors and scholars of the past two hundred years must have used the language.

Presenter2:32

I think that's a fair enough statement.

Sir Frank Francis2:32

And I think that's a

Sir Frank Francis2:34

Uh

Presenter2:34

You also have some very eccentric characters sometimes that read. Yes, perhaps fewer nowadays than we used to have, but nonetheless they well, we sometimes poke fun at them, but we like having them around. As well as books, every newspaper is kept as well in another department. Yes, yes, except that we keep all the newspapers before 1800 in the main library in Bloomsbury and a copy of the Times. Mm-hmm. It's planned to move the British Museum Library in the near future. How far have you got with that?

Presenter3:02

Well, we've got a fair way. We have um uh sketch plans for the use of the space that will be at our disposal, which are very successful indeed, I think.

Presenter3:12

But the actual beginning of any building will take place not before about nineteen seventy. This is part of a modernization of the whole museum.

Presenter3:24

Yes, yes. It's an attempt to make the services of the library more readily accessible to the public, and it will have the additional effect of making the museum itself be very much better arranged and easier to understand.