As one of the world’s great libraries, our duty is to preserve the nation’s intellectual memory for the future and make it available to all for research, inspiration and enjoyment. At present we have well over 170 million items, in most known languages, with three million new items added every year. We have manuscripts, maps, newspapers, magazines, prints and drawings, music scores, and patents. We make our collections and programmes available to all. We operate the world’s largest document delivery service providing millions of items a year to customers all over the world. What matters to us is that we preserve the national memory and enable knowledge to be created both now and in the future by anyone, anywhere.