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108 Items

Music manuscript.

Call for composers and publishers to deposit digital scores

Help us to collect digital scores from composers and independent publishers.

An opening from a medieval manuscripts, showing a full-page illustration of the Flight of Mary and Joseph into Egypt, with foliated borders in colours and gold.

The Nature of Gothic

25 September 2025

A new exhibition at the Blackburn Museum & Art Gallery explores the origin and significance of decorative flowers in the margins of medieval prayer books.

King's Library in the British Library.

Green Libraries Week 2025

23 September 2025

We’ll be taking part in Green Libraries Week by hosting a full programme of events and activities here at the Library.

Circular abstract image.

Knowledge is Human: The Information Ecosystem in the age of AI

22 September 2025

A summit to mark the role of human-created, open knowledge in the age of AI and our collective responsibility to safeguard knowledge integrity and sustainability.

Mary Fazel's letter to the India Office, 1926 - IOR/L/E/9/953 f.120

The 1925 Special Restrictions (Coloured Alien Seamen) Order

9 September 2025

This year (2025) marks the centenary of the passing of an Order requiring maritime workers of colour to register with the police.

Scene of Buddhist monks in morbid meditation with corpses set in a natural environment, including a large lizard.

Caring for the Dead: a unique Mon funeral book

A unique Mon funeral book located at Wat Koh temple in Samut Sakhon, Thailand, has been fully digitised through the British Library's Endangered Archives Programme.

Henry Thomas Colebrooke, draped bust. Sculpted by Francis Chantrey in 1820.

The provenance of the Colebrooke Collection (5)

The fifth in a series of blog posts about the Colebrooke Collection of Sanskrit manuscripts in the British Library.

Women playing rugby

Collecting for the Women’s World Cup 2025

Discover how the UK Web Archive is capturing Wales’ journey and preserving the Women’s Rugby World Cup 2025 for future generations.

Black and white picture of Add. MSS. 14,037, fl. 10, 14 August 1645: an English plan to export enslaved people from Madagascar to Bahia de Todos os Santos, then the Brazilian colonial capital.

The British Library as a global archive

Why is time at the British Library indispensable for a historian tracing colonial Brazil’s entanglements with the wider world?

A print of a dissection taking place with surgeons around a table

Sébastien Leclerc I and the Imprimerie Royale

Discover how the engraver Sébastien Leclerc I used the Planches Gravées de l’Imprimerie Royale to leave a rare glimpse of himself and his deep connection to science.

A fish in combat with an animal from a medieval manuscript

Ferocious fish

We take a look at some of our most 'fishy' manuscripts.

Illustration of a church

Maria Harriett Turner – JMW’s unconventional cousin

Like the great artist himself, many of JMW Turner’s relations led unconventional private lives...

Women playing rugby

Collecting Thistles: archiving Scotland at the Rugby Women’s Cup

As Scotland’s Thistles prepare for the Women’s Rugby World Cup, we’re building a record of how the tournament is seen, shared and remembered online.

Yomi Ayeni with a quote: 'The Library was keen to host my steampunk show'

Transporting the Library into a steampunk universe

An interview with Yomi Ayeni.

VJ Day celebrations in London's Piccadilly Circus with a row of soldiers and 2 buses in the background

VJ Day, 15 August 1945

Discover how Victory over Japan Day was marked 80 years ago, from celebrations in Britain to reflections for peace and progress across India.

The engraver's index on f. 36 of volume

The scrapbooks of the Imprimerie Royale

Profiling the seven volumes of the Planches Gravées de l’Imprimerie Royale [Plates of the Royal Printing House].

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor photograph

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor at 150

On Coleridge-Taylor's 150th anniversary, we look at some of the material relating to the composer from our collections.

A black and white photo of workers on the field

Little worlds of food control

Professor Bryce Evans explores the racialised ordering of food in the Caribbean in the early twentieth century.

Illustration of Shoreditch Free Public Library with three people standing outside.

The Radical Act behind your local library

2025 sees the 175th anniversary of the Public Libraries Act 1850.

View of the Beyond the Bassline exhibition

Beyond the Bassline: making an impact in libraries across the UK

We’re pleased to share key findings from our Beyond the Bassline: 500 Years of Black British Music programme evaluation.

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