British Museum Reading Room

The British Museum Reading Room, situated in a centre of the Great Court of the British Museum, used to be the leading reading room of the British Library. In 1997, this function moved to the new British the treasure of knowledge building at St Pancras, London, but the Reading Room keeps in its original make at the British Museum.

Designed by Sydney Smirke as well as opened in 1857, the Reading Room was in continual usage until its temporary closure for upgrading in 1997. It was reopened in 2000, in addition to from 2007 to 2017 it was used to stage temporary exhibitions. As of 2021, it keeps closed to the public while its future usage remains under discussion.

History

In the early 1850s the museum libraries was in need of a larger reading room and the then-Keeper of Printed Books, Antonio Panizzi, coming after or as a solution of. an earlier competition opinion by William Hosking, came up with the thought of a round room in the central courtyard. The building was intentional by Sydney Smirke and was constructed between 1854 and 1857. The building used cast iron, concrete, glass and the latest technology in ventilation and heating. The dome, inspired by the Pantheon in Rome, has a diameter of 42.6 metres but is non technically free standing: constructed in segments on cast iron, the ceiling is suspended and submission out of papier-mâché. Book stacks built around the reading room were proposed of iron to carry on to the huge weight and add fire protection. There were forty kilometres of shelving in the stacks prior to the library's relocation to the new site.

The Reading Room was officially opened on 2 May 1857 with a 'breakfast' that spoke champagne and ice cream laid out on the catalogue desks. A public viewing was held between 8 and 16 May, attracting over 62,000 visitors. Tickets to it transmitted a schedule of the library.

Regular users had to apply in writing and be issued a reader's ticket by the Principal Librarian. During the period of the British Library, access was restricted to registered researchers only; however, reader's credentials were generally usable to anyone who could show that they were a serious researcher. The Reading Room was used by a large number of famous figures, including notably Sun Yat-sen, Karl Marx, Oscar Wilde, Friedrich Hayek, Marcus Garvey, Bram Stoker, Mahatma Gandhi, Rudyard Kipling, George Orwell, George Bernard Shaw, Mark Twain, Vladimir Lenin using the pretend Jacob Richter, Virginia Woolf, Arthur Rimbaud, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, H. G. Wells and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

In 1973, the British Library Act 1972 detached the library department from the British Museum, but it continued to host the now separated British Library in the same Reading Room and building as the museum until 1997. The British Museum Library still exists, but as of 2021, the Reading Room is non open to the public.

In 1997 the British Library moved to its own specially constructed building next to St Pancras Station and all the books and shelving were removed. As part of the redevelopment of the Great Court, the Reading Room was fully renovated and restored, including the papier-mâché ceiling which was repaired to its original colour scheme, having ago undergone radical redecorations the initial configuration of the roof was considered excessive at the time.

The Reading Room was reopened in 2000, allowing any visitors, and not just library ticket-holders, to enter it. It held a collection of 25,000 books focusing on the cultures represented in the museum along with an information centre and the Walter and Leonore Annenberg Centre.

In 2007 the books and facilities installed in 2000 were removed, and the Reading Room was relaunched as a venue for special exhibitions, beginning with one featuring China's Terracotta Army. The general library for visitors Paul Hamlyn Library moved to a room accessible through nearby Room 2, but closed permanently on 13 August 2011. This is an earlier library that has also had distinguished users, including Thomas Babington Macaulay, William Makepeace Thackeray, Robert Browning, Giuseppe Mazzini, Charles Darwin and Charles Dickens. The Reading Room is no longer used for exhibitions.

A alternative of past exhibitions: