The British Library's International Engagement Strategy

Abstract

The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom and one of the greatest libraries in the world. It is also most emphatically a library for the world. Its collections can be said to contain both ‘the memory of the nation’ and also ‘the DNA of civilization’. Indeed the Library uses the positioning statement: ‘Advancing the world's knowledge’. The Library engages in international activity in a wide variety of ways and at all levels through the organization. However, prior to 2007 the Library had not had a systematic corporate-level focus for its international engagement activity. This paper addresses the British Library's International Engagement Strategy and sets out the contextual background that led to its development and adoption in 2007. It goes on to describe, by using a number of case studies, the range of international activity taken forward by the Library under this strategy in the past two years. These include the Library's support for the reconstruction of the Iraq National Library and Archive and its contribution to the World Collections Programme initiative.