High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom, and is the world`s largest library in terms of total number of items. The library is a major research library, holding over 150 million items from every country in the world, in virtually all known languages and in many formats, both print and digital: books, manuscripts, journals, newspapers, magazines, sound and music recordings, videos, play-scripts, patents, databases, maps, stamps, prints, drawings. The Library`s collections include around 14 million books (second only to the USA`s Library of Congress), along with substantial holdings of manuscripts and historical items dating back as far as 2000 BC.