Collection guides

Asian Britain: music and audiovisual

Rich and wide-ranging collections, especially of music and recorded sound

Ballads and broadsides

Popular, cheap printed ephemera that kept people entertained and informed

Black Britain: music and audiovisual

Rich and wide-ranging collections, especially of music and recorded sound

Classical music recordings

Recordings in the western concert tradition, opera, liturgical music, and the pre-Baroque repertories of Western Europe

Covid-19 collections

Collections relating to the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic.

Digitised printed books (16th–19th centuries) with...

British Library printed collection items digitised in partnership with Google Books

Early printed books

Highlights of incunabula and books printed before 1600

Evanion Collection

Victorian printed ephemera

Hirsch Collection

Ca. 18,000 items of printed music and music literature and 76 manuscripts collected by Paul Hirsch and dating from the l...

King’s manuscripts

Medieval and post-medieval manuscripts and topographical material

Medieval and early modern British historical manus...

Sources for British history before 1600

Medieval and early modern British literary manuscr...

Sources for British literature before 1600

Music manuscripts and archives

Sources for vocal and instrumental works from the Middle Ages to the present

Music recordings

Our vast collection includes commercial discs, tapes of radio broadcasts, and rare or unpublished recordings

Pop music recordings

We hold one of the most wide-ranging collections of popular music in the world