London - The Piazza, British Library, Kings Cross, Euston - postcard

Postcard
• Picture / Image:  The Piazza, The British Library, Euston Road, Kings Cross, London
• Publisher:  The British Library
• Postally used:  no
• Stamp:  n/a
• Postmark(s): n/a
• Sent to:  n/a
• Notes / condition: 

Please ask if you need any other information and I will do the best I can to answer.

------------------------------------------------

Postage & Packing:

UK (incl. IOM, CI & BFPO): 99p

Europe: £1.60

Rest of world (inc. USA etc): £2.75

No additional charges for more than one postcard. You can buy as many postcards from me as you like and you will just pay the fee above once. (If buying postcards with other things such as books, please contact or wait for invoice before paying).

Payment Methods:

UK - PayPal, Cheque (from UK bank) or postal order

Outside UK: PayPal ONLY (unless otherwise stated) please.   NO non-UK currency checks or money orders (sorry).

NOTE: All postcards are sent in brand new stiffened envelopes which I have bought for the task. These are specially made to protect postcards and you may be able to re-use them. In addition there are other costs to sending so the above charge is not just for the stamp!

I will give a full refund if you are not fully satisfied with the postcard.

----------------------------------------------

Text from the free encyclopedia WIKIPEDIA may appear below to give a little background information (internal links may not  work) :

*************

The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom.^[2] The library is a major research library, holding over 150 million items from many countries, in many languages^[3] 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,^[4] along with substantial holdings of manuscripts and historical items dating back as far as 2000 BC.

As a legal deposit library, the British Library receives copies of all books produced in the United Kingdom and Ireland, including a significant proportion of overseas titles distributed in the UK. It also has a programme for content acquisitions. The British Library adds some three million items every year occupying 9.6 kilometres (6.0 mi) of new shelf space.^[5]

The library is a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. It is located on the north side of Euston Road in St Pancras, London (between Euston railway station and St Pancras railway station) and has a document storage centre and reading room at Boston Spa, Wetherby in West Yorkshire.

The library was originally a department of the British Museum and from the mid-19th century occupied the famous circular British Museum Reading Room. It became legally separate in 1973, and by 1997 had moved into its new purpose-built building at St Pancras, London.

The British Library was created on 1 July 1973 as a result of the British Library Act 1972.^[6] Prior to this, the national library was part of the British Museum, which provided the bulk of the holdings of the new library, alongside smaller organisations which were folded in (such as the National Central Library, the National Lending Library for Science and Technology and the British National Bibliography).^[6] In 1974 functions previously exercised by the Office for Scientific and Technical Information were taken over; in 1982 the India Office Library and Records and the HMSO Binderies became British Library responsibilities.^[7] 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.^[8]

The core of the Library's historical collections is based on a series of donations and acquisitions from the 18th century, known as the 'foundation collections'.^[9] These include the books and manuscripts of Sir Robert Cotton, Sir Hans Sloane, Robert Harley and the King's Library of King George III,^[10] as well as the Old Royal Library donated by King George II.

For many years its collections were dispersed in various buildings around central London, in places such as Bloomsbury (within the British Museum), Chancery Lane, and Holborn, with an interlibrary lending centre at Boston Spa, Wetherby in West Yorkshire (situated on Thorp Arch Trading Estate) and the newspaper library at Colindale, north-west London.^[6]

Initial plans for the British Library required demolition of an integral part of Bloomsbury - a seven acre swathe of streets immediately in front of the Museum, so that the Library could be situated directly opposite. After a long and hard-fought campaign led by Dr George Wagner, this decision was overturned and the library was instead constructed on a site at Euston Road next to St Pancras railway station.^[11]

Since 1997 the main collection has been housed in this single new building, although post-1800 newspapers are still held at Colindale, and the Document Supply Centre is in Yorkshire. The Library previously had a book storage depot in Woolwich, south-east London, which is no longer in use. The new library was designed specially for the purpose by the architect Colin St John Wilson.^[6] Facing Euston Road is a large piazza that includes pieces of public art, such as large sculptures by Eduardo Paolozzi (a bronze statue based on William Blake's study of Isaac Newton) and Antony Gormley. It is the largest public building constructed in the United Kingdom in the 20th century.^[12][13]

In the middle of the building is a six-storey glass tower containing the King's Library, with 65,000 printed volumes along with other pamphlets, manuscripts and maps collected by King George III between 1763 and 1820.^[14] In December 2009 a new storage building at Thorp Arch, City of Leeds, West Yorkshire was opened by Rosie Winterton. The new facility, costing £26 million, has a capacity for seven million items, stored in more than 140,000 bar-coded containers, which are retrieved by robots,^[15] from the 162.7 Miles of temperature and humidity-controlled storage space.^[16]

type=printed postcards

theme=topographical: british

sub-theme=england

county/ country=london

number of items=single

period=1945 - present

postage condition=unposted