Find out more about our experts and departments

• AMERICAN AND AUSTRALASIAN STUDIES

  American and Australasian Studies is the focus within the Library for providing information and access to content relating to all aspects of the study of the Americas, Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific.
  
  Experts:

  Carole Holden, Head of American and Australasian Studies

• ASIA, MIDDLE EASTERN & AFRICA COLLECTIONS

  The department of Asia, Middle Eastern & Africa Collections of the British Library is responsible for the British Library’s holdings in the languages of Asia, North Africa, the Middle East, Australia and New Zealand. The department also houses the archives of the India Office Library and Records, which reflect the territorial interests and activities of the East India Company and the India Office.

  Experts:
  
  Dr Colin Baker
  Classical and medieval Arabic and the Middle East
  
  Penny Brook
  India Office Records 1600 - 1947
  
  Dr Susan Whitfield
  Chinese; Silk Road and central Asian history and historiography; manuscript studies; 20^th century exploration of Silk Road and Dunhuang. Archaeology and world history.
  
  
  

• BUSINESS

  The British Library’s Business & IP Centre is supported by the London Development Agency (LDA) to provide a single access point to support entrepreneurs and SMEs in London as well as new business and IP information, and other relevant content and data, guided by Library information experts and associated partners. The Business & IP Centre has been used by over 150,000 people since it opened in March 2006. Access to the Centre is free, but users need a Reader Pass. For more information visit: www.bl.uk/bipc

  For case studies of entrepreneurs that have used the Business & IP Centre to help set-up their businesses, please contact the Press Office.
  
  Experts:

  Neil Infield
  Manager of the Business & IP Centre, expert on British Library’s Business Collections including £5m worth of market research data, 50 million patent databases and company reports.
  
  Mark Sheahan
  The Library’s ‘Inventor in Residence’. Provides one-to-one sessions on innovation and a key spokesperson on all aspects of getting an invention to market. Mark specialises in plastic easy-open, tamper-evident, child-resistant dispensing closures for the packaging industry, and has had his inventions taken up by major packaging producers in the UK, USA and recently Japan.

  Stephen Fear
  The British Library's Entrepreneur-in-residence. Stephen opened his first 'office' in a red phone box when he was 16, and now runs a multinational trading juggernaut incorporating 64 companies with interests in everything from hotels to manufacturing.

• CONSERVATION

  The principal role of our conservators is to treat damaged or deteriorated items to ensure that they are stable and accessible - both now and in the future - for exhibitions, public programmes and researchers.

  Conservation at the British Library is carried out by skilled professional conservators. We have a policy of minimal intervention to preserve the cultural and historical context of the item. This means doing the minimum treatment necessary to an item. Our studios are housed in the British Library Centre for Conservation purpose built state of the art accommodation opened in 2007.

  Experts:
  
  Dr Cordelia Rogerson
  Head of Conservation, is responsible for managing the work undertaken by the Conservation teams and has particular expertise in modern materials (plastics) and textiles associated with library and archive collections.

• DIGITAL

  For the past two decades, the British Library has been involved in digitisation. More recently, we have entered the world of mass digitisation in partnership with external funding bodies and technology providers. Through digitisation, we are creating a valuable and enduring resource for scholars and the public alike.

  Experts:
  
  Aly Conteh
  Digitisation Programme Manager – Responsible for oversight, setting technical standards and defining workflows for the digitisation of British Library collection items.
  
  Dr Adam Farquhar  
  Head of Digital Library Technology at the British Library, where he co-founded the Library’s Digital Preservation Team and initiated the Library's Dataset Programme. He is Co-ordinator and Scientific Director of the EU co-unded Planets Digital Preservation project and was a lead architect on the BL's Digital Library System.

• CAPTURING THE DIGITAL UNIVERSE

  Publishers and distributors in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland have a legal obligation to send one copy of each of their publications to the Legal Deposit Office of the British Library within one month of publication. Regulations coming into force on 6 April 2013 enabled the British Library, along with six other UK libraries, to collect, preserve and provide long term access to the UK's digital output - including blogs, e-books and the entire UK Web Domain.

  Regulations coming into force on 6 April will enable six major libraries to collect, preserve and provide long term access to the increasing proportion of the nation’s cultural and intellectual output that appears in digital form – including blogs, e-books and the entire UK web domain.

  Regulations coming into force on 6 April will enable six major libraries to collect, preserve and provide long term access to the increasing proportion of the nation’s cultural and intellectual output that appears in digital form – including blogs, e-books and the entire UK web domain.

  Regulations coming into force on 6 April will enable six major libraries to collect, preserve and provide long term access to the increasing proportion of the nation’s cultural and intellectual output that appears in digital form – including blogs, e-books and the entire UK web domain.

  Regulations coming into force on 6 April will enable six major libraries to collect, preserve and provide long term access to the increasing proportion of the nation’s cultural and intellectual output that appears in digital form – including blogs, e-books and the entire UK web domain.

  Experts:
  
  Lucie Burgess
  Head of Content Strategy at the British Library, and led the Library's process and approach towards digital legal deposit.
  
  Helen Hockx-Yu
  UK Web Archive - Web Archiving Programme Manager at the British Library, leading a team of web archivists and technologists to archive and preserve the UK Web.

• ENGLISH & DRAMA

  Based on its legal deposit collections, the Library has the world’s pre-eminent collection of published English language and literature from the UK. In addition, we hold outstanding collections of manuscripts and archives charting the history of English Literature and Drama from Beowulf to present, as well as extensive collections of UK sound recordings, including drama for stage and radio, prose and poetry in performance, writers’ talks and interviews, oral history interviews, and sociolinguistic field recordings. Recent high-profile additions include the collections of J G Ballard, Ted Hughes, John Berger and Harold Pinter.  Please ask Press Office for appropriate contacts.

• EUROPEAN

  The West European collections include research-level publications in the humanities and social sciences published in Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and the Scandinavian countries. They include material published around the world in the languages of these countries, e.g. books published in German in Austria, in French in francophone Canada, or in Afrikaans in South Africa.
  
  Experts:
  
  Susan Halstead
  Czech, Slovak and Lusatian with particular interest in Czech-German cultural relations, comparative literature, Czech music and literary translation
  
  Janet Zmroczek
  Central Asia/Caucasus collections and Polish community in the UK in the 19th century

• HISTORY & CLASSICAL

  The manuscripts collection of the British Library form part of the national repository of manuscripts, private papers and archives. They contain material of outstanding research importance for all periods, countries and disciplines. The collection covers Medieval and Earlier Manuscripts (circa 300BC to 1603), Modern Historical Collections (1603 to the Present) and Literary and Theatrical Collections. The collection also comprises of a series of named collections that have been acquired over the history of the British Museum and the Library, from the Foundation Collections (Cotton, Harley and Sloane) to the series of Additional Manuscripts.
  
  Experts:
  
  Adrian Edwards
  King’s Library (1454 – 1830’s); Grenville Library (1454 – 1840’s); Playbills in the British Library collection 1770’s to 19th Century and early printed materials in native North American Indian languages (16th - 19th Century)
  
  Claire Breay
  Magna Carta; medieval charters and medieval monasticism (1200-1500)
  
  Andrea Clarke
  16th and 17th Century Spanish history and Early Modern history (1500-1700)
  
  
  

• LEARNING

  The Learning Team deliver a programme of workshops, events and online resources for school groups, young people, families, community groups and adult learners. We help people to develop important skills for learning and work across the curriculum to support a broad range of subject areas, ages and abilities. 20,000 participants take part in our programmes each year and 1.2m individuals use the Learning website at www.bl.uk/learning  

  Experts:
  
  Roger Walshe  
  Responsible for the strategic development and delivery of the Library’s programmes for schools and young people, educational web projects, community, family and regional programmes, teacher training and exhibition interpretation. He is particularly interested in how digital media can help students and teachers engage with heritage collections.

• MAPS

  The British Library Map Collections form the national collection of cartographic materials. The Library’s Maps collections contain over 4½ million items held in the British Library’s cartographic collections dating from 200AD to the present day.

  The focal point is the Map Library, which provides access to maps, atlases and globes of all parts of the world dating back to the fifteenth century. The Maps Collections recently featured on a major BBC4 documentary series entitled ‘The Beauty of Maps’ – www.bbc.co.uk/beautyofmaps

  Experts:

  Peter Barber
  Map history; topographical views and early (pre-1830) English watercolours, European mapping all periods to 1850
  
  Tom Harper
  Antiquarian mapping (to 1900)

• NEWSPAPERS

  The British Library’s Newspaper Collections are the finest collections of newspapers from Britain and Ireland and consist of over 660,000 bound volumes and parcels and over 370,000 reels of microfilm. Newspapers are acquired selectively from overseas countries all across the world, in Western, east European and Slavonic languages, with major historic collections dating back as far as 1631. A wide range of UK and Irish popular periodicals, predominantly weekly and fortnightly publications is also held and currently received under legal deposit.

  Experts:
  
  Stewart Gillies
  Newspaper collections and newspaper bibliography

• VISUAL ARTS

  The British Library holds a major collection of photographs and other visual arts, principally from the 19^th and early 20^th centuries. Particular strengths of the collection are the Fox Talbot Collection from the earliest days of the medium, 19^th-century photographically-illustrated books and photographs from the Indian subcontinent.

  Experts:
  
  John Falconer
  Areas of specialism are the work of William Henry Fox Talbot and his circle, and photography in Asia.

• SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY AND MEDICINE

  The Science, Technology and Medicine team works closely with a range of scientific organisations and the research community to understand and support their research information needs. We have an unrivalled collection of contemporary research information in a wide range of formats covering the breadth of scientific, technical and medical subjects. We are a partner in delivering Europe PubMed Central – a free-to-access archive of biomedical and health research articles, and are one of the founding organisations of the DataCite service, a global initiative which addresses the problem of how to find, access and re-use the results of research. We also run regular science events for researchers from academia and industry, policy makers, research funders, publishers and all those with a stake in science. Members of the team have a range of expertise covering scientific research to information science and technology.

  Experts:
  
  Lee-Ann Coleman PhD, Head of STM

• SOCIAL SCIENCES

  Social Sciences is the focus within the British Library for providing access to content relevant to the commissioners, producers and users of social science research. Our content includes social science research outputs, statistical publications, law, and official publications from government and organisations such as the United Nations, World Bank, OECD and European Commission. Our oral history, newspaper and magazine and ephemera collections also include fantastic unique material, as do our historical and international collections. The British Library supports students, researchers, professionals and practitioners in the pure and applied social sciences, as well as everyone interested in public affairs, past and present.

  Experts:
  
  Jude England, Head of Social Sciences
  Responsible for the development and implementation of the Library’s social science strategy, which aims to support and inspire the producers and users of social science research. Key priorities are to open up the content of the Library, support capacity building, knowledge exchange and the impact agenda, as well as develop content for future research. Further information on the work of the department and key curatorial contacts can be obtained from Jude.
  
  

• SOUND, MOVING IMAGE AND MUSIC

  The British Library holds over a million audio discs, 185,000 tapes, and the UK's sound archive containing 3.5 million sounds. The collections come from all over the world and cover the entire range of recorded music, drama and literature, to oral history and wildlife sounds.
  
  The Library’s moving image collection of around 40,000 titles, mostly on videotape and DVD comprises music, particularly popular music, with some drama and literature recordings, and ethno-musical recordings.

  The extensive music and music-related material in the British Library includes printed and manuscript scores, archives of composers, performers and musical organisations, sound recordings, concert programmes, and books and periodicals on music.

  Experts:
  
  Richard Ranft
  Sounds and sound archiving; audio technology;
  
  Nicolas Bell
  Medieval music (900-1500) and music manuscripts
  
  Rob Perks
  Oral history; local and community history; memory and history and funding
  
  Luke McKernan
  Moving image archives, film and television news, online video, silent cinema, non-fiction film, British cinema, Shakespeare on film, television and radio