Coordinates: 51°31′9.91″N 0°7′37.47″W / 51.5194194°N 0.127075°W
 The Reading Room stands in the centre of the Great Court of the British Museum, which now has a glass roof designed by Norman Foster. |
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| Building | |
|---|---|
| Structural system | Segmented dome |
| Town | Bloomsbury, west London |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Construction | |
| Started | 1854 |
| Completed | 1857 |
| Design team | |
| Architect | Sydney Smirke |
The British Museum Reading Room, situated in the centre of the Great Court of the British Museum, used to be the main reading room of the British Library. In 1997, this function moved to the new British Library building at St Pancras, London, but the Reading Room remains in its original form. Designed by Sydney Smirke on a suggestion by the Library's Chief Librarian Anthony Panizzi, following an earlier competition idea by William Hosking, the Reading Room was in continual use from 1857 until its temporary closure in 1997. The Reading Room's domed roof is metal framed, and the surface that makes up the ceiling is a type of papier-mâché. Access was restricted to registered researchers only; however, reader's credentials were generally available to anyone who could show that they were a serious researcher.
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The Reading Room was used by a large number of famous figures, including notably Mohammad Ali Jinnah[1], Karl Marx, Oscar Wilde, Bram Stoker, Mahatma Gandhi, Rudyard Kipling, George Orwell, George Bernard Shaw, Mark Twain, Lenin, Norbert Elias, Virginia Woolf, Arthur Rimbaud and H. G. Wells.[2]
Following the collection's move to the new site, the old Reading Room was opened to the public in 2000, following a renovation and addition of a gridshell roof by noted architect Norman Foster. It houses a modern information centre, the Walter and Leonore Annenberg Centre[3] and a collection of books on history, art, travel, and other subjects relevant to the museum's collections, on open shelves.
In 2006 the British Museum announced its plans to modify the Reading Room to house a temporary exhibition entitled 'The First Emperor: China's Terracotta Army'. This has involved building a new floor above the existing reading desks. It will revert to its former use in 2012[3]. Details of the exhibitions that have been held in the Reading Room are:
The British Museum Reading Room has become iconic. It is the subject of an eponymous poem, The British Museum Reading Room, by Louis MacNeice. Much of the action of David Lodge's 1965 novel The British Museum Is Falling Down takes place in the old Reading Room.
Alfred Hitchcock used the Reading Room and the dome of the
British Museum as a location for the climax of his first sound film
Blackmail (1929). Other
movies with key scenes in the Reading Room include Night of the
Demon (1957) and in the 2001 Japanese anime OVA Read or Die, the
Reading Room is used as the secret entrance to the British
Library's fictional "Special Operations Division".
Probably the first work of fiction in which the British Museum
Reading Room plays an important part as a setting is "New Grub
Street" by George Gissing. Published in 1891.
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   | BBC information - BBC News | Entertainment | Facelift for British Museum's reading room |
| | British Museum Reading Room information - British Museum - Reading Room |
| | British Museum Reading Room information - British Museum - Reading Room |
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