Library Tourism: The Case of the British Library

The British Library (96 Euston Road, London, NW1 2DB) is a legal deposit library and the national library of the United Kingdom. It is sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. The British Library (BL) is one of the largest libraries in the world and contains between 170 and 200 million items (around 140 million books; manuscripts dating as far as 2000 BC, journals, newspapers, magazines, sound/music recordings, videos, play-scripts, patents, databases, maps, stamps, prints, drawings) in many formats (sound recordings, print, manuscript and digital). The BL was created on 1 July 1973 as a result of the British Library Act 1972, and until then, it was part of the British Museum. With the closure of the Museum’s Round Reading Room (25 October 1997), the library stock was moved into the St Pancras building, designed by the architect Sir Colin St John Wilson (1922-2007) and his wife MJ Long (1939-2018). Facing Euston Road, this new building – classified as a Grade I listed building of exceptional interest for its architecture and history – was opened by Queen Elizabeth II on 25 June 1998. The BL can be visited for free and is the largest public building constructed in the United Kingdom in the 20th century.

The common areas of the BL have become social places where people feel in a “third place” (Berens & Noorda, 2023), which enables them to research, play videogames, listen to music, study and socialise, and where tourists rest and admire historical manuscripts, books, buildings and furniture. As open and welcoming places, libraries such as the BL are also visited for practical reasons by travellers to rest, use wi-fi and computers, read newspapers, meet people and get acquainted with the history and culture of the visited neighbourhood, city and country. As first editions of the Harry Potter series and Shakespeare’s folios as well as exhibitions on fantasy fiction or pop culture become touristic attractions, the BL is increasingly ‘consumed’ and visited as a tourist hotspot. In 2019, The New York Times (Krueger, 2019) noticed how libraries were becoming tourist attractions, especially the ones, like the BL, built recently “resembling nothing like the book-depot versions from the past”, and many of these institutions are famous for their interior design and surprising buildings. With the nineteenth-century cultural nationalism, national libraries, archives and theatres became national(istic) spaces and enterprises that aimed to preserve and promote the ideas of national heritage(s) and culture(s). Libraries such as the BL continuously reinvent themselves and attract new public by organising thematic exhibitions, digital libraries, performances, workshops, readings, autograph sessions and other cultural mediation strategies. This leads to libraries being included in tourist circuits and to library tourism, contributing to the sustainable development of these institutions.

As the ancient and modern Alexandria libraries show, libraries, as ‘social infrastructures’ (Kilnenberg, 2018), have always been a place of knowledge (learning), political, social and personal power/empowerment and socialisation. The BL shows that, as social and cultural hubs, public and specialised libraries stand in stark opposition to the materialism and individualism that also define our cultures (Halpern, 2019). By reinventing themselves, libraries have become (even more) popular tourist destinations where everyone is welcome. In 2023, while digital consumption of books grew, generation Z ‘rediscovered’ the public library and started using “the hallowed institutions” at higher rates than older generations to read and pose for Instagram photos (Demopoulos, 2024). Library and bookstore tourism is not new, but bibliotourism is a recent concept and an emergent segment of cultural tourism (Roque & Guerreiro, 2021, pp. 42-43). As younger people (re) aestheticise the beaux-arts backdrop of reading public places such as the BL, library use becomes part of media consumption (Berens & Noorda, 2023). Like other repositories of (in)tangible heritage, the BL is part of the London and national landscape(s) and a visitor attraction in its own right. Inside the Saint Pancras building tourists can visit several galleries, including the Treasures Gallery, and attend courses, activities for schools, thematic exhibitions, buy BL souvenirs at the shop, while the large piazza includes several pieces of public art, such as the bronze statue of Isaac Newton (based on William Blake’s 1795 print Newton) by Sir Eduardo Paolozzi (1924-2005), and Antony Gormley’s Planets (2002). The Treasures Gallery displays famous books and manuscripts (for instance: Beowulf, the Magna Carta, the Gutenberg Bible, Canterbury Tales, Captain Cook’s journal; first editions of novels by Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë and many other authors), which are displayed as national historical documents, pop culture ‘artefacts’ and items of tourist interest. In the middle of the main BL’s building, a glass tower displays one of the main tourist attractions, the King’s Library. The vertical library (King’s Tower) contains the Thomas Grenville collection and 65,000 printed volumes, manuscripts and maps collected by King George III (1738-1820) between 1763 and 1820. The free guided tours of the Treasures of the BL last one hour (Monday-Saturday, 11.00, Sunday, 11.30), start with a brief history of the library, and visitors are shown some highlights and items in public spaces. The Building Tour (Fridays and Sundays, 14.00) lasts one hour and includes the Treasure gallery, the book handling room and the reading rooms. The BL’s proximity to King’s Cross St. Pancras station attracts many tourists who visit its public areas and take the two free guided tours mentioned on websites such as Tripadvisor and Lonely Planet as authentic tourist experiences. The BL is also a place where the cultures of the visitors and the local cultures may interact, while the photographed items and building are shared on social media (#rarebooks; #amreading; #librarylove; #booktok) and become local and (inter)national hotspots.

How to cite this dictionary entry: Puga, R. M. (2024). Library tourism: The case of the British Library. In R. Baleiro, G. Capecchi & J. Arcos-Pumarola (Orgs.). E-Dictionary of Literary Tourism. University for Foreigners of Perugia.