Excerpt from The British Museum Library This essay traverses some of the ground covered by Edwards's Lives of tin: Founders of tile Brz'tzir/z Museum, and the Reading-room manuals of Sims and Nichols, all long out of print. But it has its own field, and adds a little here and there, I venture to hope, to the published history of our national library. It is not intended as a guide to the Reading room. Lists of some of the official catalogues and other publications that form so distinguished a part of the work of the British Museum are appended for the convenience of students in general. The bibliography indicates the main sources to which I am indebted for material. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.