Largest Libraries in World

British Library

The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom. The library is a major research library, holding over 150 million items from many countries, in many languages and in many formats, both print and digital: books, manuscripts, journals, newspapers, magazines, sound and music recordings, videos, play-scripts, patents, databases, maps, stamps, prints, drawings. The Library's collections include around 14 million books, along with substantial holdings of manuscripts and historical items dating back as far as 2000 BC. The British Library is the largest library in the world, with the second largest being the Library of Congress of the United States. The British Library adds some three million items every year occupying 9.6 kilometres (6.0 mi) of new shelf space.

The British Library was created on 1 July 1973 as a result of the British Library Act 1972. In 1983, the Library absorbed the National Sound Archive, which holds many sound and video recordings, with over a million discs and thousands of tapes. The British Library makes a number of images of items within its collections available online. Its Online Gallery gives access to 30,000 images from various medieval books, together with a handful of exhibition-style items in a proprietary format, such as the Lindisfarne Gospels. The British Library's commercial secure electronic delivery service was started in 2003 at a cost of £6 million. This offers more than 100 million items including 280,000 journal titles, 50 million patents, 5 million reports, 476,000 US dissertations and 433,000 conference proceedings for researchers and library patrons worldwide which were previously unavailable outside the Library because of copyright restrictions. In November 2011, four million newspaper pages from the 18th and 19th centuries were made available online. The project will scan up to 40 million pages over the next 10 years. The archive is free to search, but there is a charge for accessing the pages themselves.

Explore the British Library is the latest iteration of the online catalogue. It contains nearly 57 million records and may be used to search, view and order items from the collections or search the contents of the Library's website. The Library's electronic collections include over 40,000 ejournals, 800 databases and other electronic resources.

Library of Congress:

The Library of Congress is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress, but which is the de facto national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Cole argues that it is now the largest and most international library in the world. He attributes that to its highly influential leaders, especially Ainsworth Rand Spofford (1864–97), Herbert Putnam (1899–1939), Luther H. Evans (1945–53), and James H. Billington (1987–). Cole says they, "have affirmed and expanded Thomas Jefferson's concept that the Library of Congress is a national institution that should be universal in scope and widely and freely available to everyone."

Library Located in four buildings in Washington, D.C., as well as the Packard Campus in Virginia, it is the second largest library in the world by shelf space and number of books, after The British Library.The Library of Congress moved to Washington in 1800, after sitting for eleven years in the temporary national capitals of New York and Philadelphia. The small Congressional Library was housed in the United States Capitol for most of the 19th century until the early 1890s. Most of the original collection had been destroyed by the British in 1814 during the War of 1812. To restore the collection in 1815, former president Thomas Jefferson sold 6,487 books, his entire personal collection, to pay his debts.

On December 24, 1851 the largest fire in the Library's history destroyed 35,000 books, about two–thirds of the Library's 55,000 book collection, including two–thirds of Jefferson's original transfer. Congress in 1852 quickly appropriated $168,700 to replace the lost books, but not for the acquisition of new materials.

The collections of the Library of Congress include more than 32 million cataloged books and other print materials in 470 languages; more than 61 million manuscripts; the largest rare book collection in North America, including the rough draft of the Declaration of Independence, a Gutenberg Bible (one of only three perfect vellum copies known to exist); over 1 million US government publications; 1 million issues of world newspapers spanning the past three centuries; 33,000 bound newspaper volumes; 500,000 microfilm reels; over 6,000 titles in all, totaling more than 120,000 issues comic book titles; films; 5.3 million maps; 6 million works of sheet music; 3 million sound recordings; more than 14.7 million prints and photographic images including fine and popular art pieces and architectural drawings; the Betts Stradivarius; and the Cassavetti Stradivarius.
The Library developed a system of book classification called Library of Congress Classification (LCC), which is used by most US research and university libraries.
The Library of Congress states that its collection fills about 838 miles (1,349 km) of bookshelves, while the British Library reports about 388 miles (624 km) of shelves. The Library of Congress holds more than 155.3 million items with more than 35 million books and other print materials, against approximately 150 million items with 25 million books for the British Library. A 2000 study by information scientists Peter Lyman and Hal Varian suggested that the amount of uncompressed textual data represented by the 26 million books then in the collection was 10 terabytes. The Library makes millions of digital objects, comprising tens of petabytes, available at its American Memory site.

New York Public Library

The New York Public Library (NYPL) is a public library system in New York City. With nearly 53 million items, the New York Public Library is the second largest public library in the United States (and third largest in the world), behind only the Library of Congress. It is an independently managed, nonprofit corporation operating with both private and public financing.

Today there are four research libraries that comprise the NYPL's research library system which hold approximately 44,000,000 items. Total item holdings, including the collections of the Branch Libraries, are 50.6 million. The Humanities and Social Sciences Library on 42nd Street is still the heart of the NYPL's research library system, but the SIBL, with approximately 2 million volumes and 60,000 periodicals, is the nation's largest public library devoted solely to science and business. The NYPL's two other research libraries are the Schomburg Center for Research and Black Culture, located at 135th Street and Lenox Avenue in Harlem and the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, located at Lincoln Center. In addition to their reference collections, the Library for the Performing Arts and the SIBL also have circulating components that are administered as ordinary branch libraries.

Russian State Library

The Russian State Library is the national library of Russia, located in Moscow. It is the largest in the country and the fourth largest in the world for its collection of books (17.5 million).It was named the V. I. Lenin State Library of the USSR from 1925 until it was renamed in 1992 as the Russian State Library. The library has over 275 km of shelves with more than 43 million items, including over 17 million books and serial volumes, 13 million journals, 350 thousand music scores and sound records, 150,000 maps and others.The Library of the Moscow Public Museum and Rumiantsev Museum, or The Rumiantsev Library’.

There are items in 247 languages of the world, the foreign part representing about 29 percent of the entire collection. Between 1922 and 1991 at least one copy of every book published in the USSR was deposited with the library, a practice which continues in a similar method today, with the library designated by law as a place to hold a "mandatory" copy of every publication issued in Russia. The library was founded on July 1, 1862, as Moscow's first free public library named ‘

National Library of Russia

The National Library of Russia in St Petersburg is not only the oldest public library in the nation, but also the first national library in the country. The NLR is currently ranked among the world’s major libraries. It has the second richest library collection in the Russian Federation, a treasury of national heritage, and is the All-Russian Information, Research and Cultural Center. Over the course of its history, the Library has aimed for comprehensive acquisition of the national printed output and has provided free access to its collections. It should not be confused with the Russian State Library, located in Moscow.

The idea of a public library in Russia emerged in the early 18th century but did not take shape until the arrival of the Russian Enlightenment. The plan of a Russian public library was submitted to Catherine in 1766 but the Empress did not approve the project for the imperial library until 27 May 1795, eighteen months before her death. A site for the building was found at the corner of Nevsky Avenue and Sadovaya Street, right in the center of the Russian Imperial capital. The construction work began immediately and lasted for almost fifteen years. The building was designed in a neoclassical style by architect Yegor Sokolov (built between: 1796–1801).
The cornerstone of the foreign-language department came from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the form of Załuski's Library (420,000 volumes), nationalized by the Russian government at the time of the partitions. The Polish-language books from the library (numbering some 55,000 titles) were returned to Poland by the Russian SFSR in 1921.By 1970; the Library contained more than 17,000,000 items.

National Diet Library

The National Diet Library is the only national library in Japan. It was established in 1948 for the purpose of assisting members of the Diet of Japan for researching matters of public policy. The library is similar in purpose and scope to the U.S. Library of Congress. The National Diet Library (NDL) consists of two main facilities in Tokyo and Kyoto, and several other branch libraries throughout Japan. The National Diet Library is the successor of three separate libraries: the library of the House of Peers, the library of the House of Representatives, both of which were established at the creation of Japan's Imperial Diet in 1890; and the Imperial Library, which had been established in 1872 under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Education. The National Diet Library opened in June 1948 in the present-day State Guest-House with an initial collection of 100,000 volumes.

In 1961, the NDL opened at its present location in Nagatachō, adjacent to the National Diet. In 1986, the NDL's Annex was completed to accommodate a combined total of 12 million books and periodicals. The Kansai-kan (the Kansai Library), which opened in October 2002 in the Kansai Science City (Seika Town, Soraku County, Kyoto Prefecture), has a collection of 6 million items. In May 2002, the NDL opened a new branch, the International Library of Children's Literature, in the former building of the Imperial Library in Ueno. This branch contains some 400,000 items of children's literature from around the world.

Important Special Collections:

The NDL also has eight major specialized collections: Modern Political and Constitutional History; Materials Concerning the Postwar Occupation of Japan; Laws and Preliminary Records; Science and Technology; Maps; Music; Foreign Books About Japan; and Rare Books.

• The Modern Political and Constitutional History Collection comprises some 300,000 items related to Japan's political and legal modernization in the 19th century.
• The NDL has an extensive microform collection of some 30 million pages of documents relating to the Occupation of Japan after World War II.
• The Laws and Preliminary Records Collection consists of some 170,000 Japanese and 200,000 foreign-language documents concerning proceedings of the National Diet and the legislatures of some 70 foreign countries, and the official gazettes, statutes, judicial opinions, and international treaties pertaining to some 150 foreign countries.
• The NDL maintains a collection of some 530,000 books and booklets and 2 million microform titles relating to the sciences. These materials include, among other things, foreign doctoral dissertations in the sciences, the proceedings and reports of academic societies, catalogues of technical standards, etc.
• The NDL has a collection of approximately 440,000 maps of Japan and other countries, including the topographical, geological, and hydrological maps and charts dating back to the early Meiji Period (1868–1912) and topographical maps of foreign countries.
• The NDL collects all phonographic recordings made in Japan, and presently holds a collection comprising 300,000 vinyl records and 200,000 compact disks.

Toronto Public Library:

Toronto Public Library (TPL) is the world's largest urban public library system. Every year, more than 19 million people visit its 98 branches and borrow more than 32 million items. Seventy-two per cent of Torontonians use the library and one in six visit at least once a week.

Toronto Public Library provides expert service in searching and finding the information Torontonians need to be successful in today's changing local, regional and global economies. Particularly relevant are the range of public library services to support:

• Literacy development, especially early literacy as young children get ready for reading and early school success
• Study, research and lifelong learning
• Integration of new Canadians
• Small business and entrepreneurs
• Career development and employment
• Recreation, quality-of-life and family supports, including materials, programming and safe public spaces.

The library's collection count is approximately 11 million items, including books, periodicals and audio-visual materials. Along with general interest fiction and non-fiction there are numerous special collections. Focused collecting efforts strive to meet multi-language and social needs

National Library of China:

The National Library of China or NLC in Beijing is the largest library in Asia, and one of the largest in the world with a collection of over 26.3 million volumes of books by 2007. It holds the largest and among the richest worldwide collections of Chinese literature and historical documents.

The forerunner of the National Library of China, the Imperial Library, was founded on 24 April 1909 by the Qing government. It was first formally opened after the Xinhai Revolution, in 1912. In 1916, the library received depository library status. In July 1928, its name was changed to National Peiping Library and was later changed to the National Library.

Notable collections and items:

• A collection of over 270,000 ancient and rare Chinese books, and over 1,640,000 traditional thread-bound Chinese books.
• Over 35,000 inscriptions on oracle bones and tortoise shells from the Shang Dynasty (c. 16th–11th century BC).
• Surviving tablets of the Xiping Stone Classics created by Cai Yong (132-192) of the Eastern Han Dynasty.
• More than 16,000 volumes of precious historical Chinese documents and manuscripts from the Mogao Caves in Dunhuang.
• Old maps, diagrams, and rubbings from ancient inscriptions on various materials.
• Copies of Buddhist sutras dating to the 6th century.
• Original draft of Sima Guang's Zizhi Tongjian.
• Books and archives from imperial libraries of the Southern Song Dynasty (c. 1127), including the works of Zhu Xi.
• Oldest extant printed edition of the Huangdi Neijing, dated between 1115-1234.
• The most complete surviving Ming Dynasty copies of the Yongle Encyclopedia ("Great Canon of the Yongle Era").
• A copy of the Siku Quanshu ("Complete Library of the Four Branches of Literature") of the Qing Dynasty.
• Essential literary and books collection from Qing Dynasty's imperial colleges and renowned private collectors.