British Library Annual Report and Accounts 2018/19 British Library Annual Report and Accounts 2018/19 Presented to Parliament pursuant to section 4(3) and 5(3) of the British Library Act 1972 Copies deposited with the Scottish Parliament, the Library for the National Assembly of Wales, and presented to the Northern Ireland Assembly Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed on 10 July 2019 HC 2443 Annual Report and Accounts 2018/19 1 © British Library 2019 Contents This publication is licensed under the terms of the Open Government Licence v3.0 except where otherwise stated. To view this licence, visit The year in review 4 nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3. Chair’s and Chief Executive’s introduction 6 Where we have identified any third party copyright information you will need to obtain permission from the copyright holders concerned. Annual Report 2018/19 The text of this document (this excludes, where present, the Royal Arms Our Purposes 9 and all departmental or agency logos) may be reproduced free of charge Custodianship 10 in any format or medium provided that it is reproduced accurately and Research 14 not in a misleading context. Business 18 The material must be acknowledged as British Library copyright and the Culture 22 document title specified. Where third party material has been identified, Learning 26 permission from the respective copyright holder must be sought. International 30 Any enquiries related to this publication should be sent to us Public Lending Right 34 at [email protected] Enabling Living Knowledge 35 This publication is available at www.gov.uk/official-documents Key Performance Indicators 38 Grants and Donations 40 ISBN 978-1-5286-1300-2 Annual Accounts 2018/19 CCS0519213638 Statement of the British Library Board’s and Accounting Officer’s Responsibilities 44 Financial Review 45 Reference and Administrative Details 48 Sustainability Report 49 Remuneration Report 53 Governance Statement 57 Other Disclosures 63 The Certificate and Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General to the Houses of Parliament and the Scottish Parliament 65 Statement of Financial Activities 67 Balance Sheet 69 Cash flow Statement 70 Notes to the Accounts 71 2 Annual Report and Accounts 2018/9 Annual Report and Accounts 2018/19 3 The year in review CULTURE 290,000 LANDMARK 1.1 MILLION VISITORS FIRST INTERNATIONAL PHYSICAL ITEMS to our exhibitions at St Pancras, on TOURING EXHIBITION ACQUISITIONS subjects ranging from Anglo-Saxon history collected under legal deposit including the personal archive of with Harry Potter: A History of Magic to stories of the Windrush generation (everything published in the UK Tony Benn and two rare Beatles demo shown at New York Historical Society and the Rep of Ireland) discs (Love Me Do and Please Please Me) OVER 1 MILLION 50,000 VISITORS 242,000 30 GRANTS AWARDED PEOPLE ENGAGED to at least 300 cultural events including DIGITAL ITEMS through the two year Living Knowledge talks, performances, festivals and more AROUND THE WORLD Network project working with 22 of collected under legal deposit (not through the Endangered Archives the UK’s largest public libraries and the including a crawl of the entire UK Programme – preserving at-risk archival CUSTODIANSHIP web domain for the UK Web Archive) material from Argentina to Rajasthan National Libraries of Scotland and Wales 418,000 £29m OF CAPITAL 10.6 FUNDING SECURED LEARNING visits to our Reading Rooms to extend our Harry M Weinrebe in St Pancras and Boston Spa, SAVINGS DELIVERED MILLION USERS for the UK research sector through of our digital learning resources Learning Centre and 5.1m items consulted online our UK Research Reserve project 30,000 NEW ACCESS AND £9.2m AWARDED FIRST LONDON OUTREACH RESEARCH by the UKRI for our collaborative SCHOOL VISITS Living With Machines research FASHION WEEK by under-18s and their teachers PROGRAMME project with the Alan Turing Institute SHOWCASE established to remove barriers for people and AHRC at the Library, featuring Nabil Nayal’s with additional or complex needs designs inspired by the Library collection INTERNATIONAL 23,000 PEOPLE SUCCESSFUL OVER 500 ANNOUNCED A TWO SUPPORTED FUNDING BID ENGAGEMENTS YEAR PARTNERSHIP by the Business & IP Centre relating to over 80 countries, with Bibliothèque nationale de France for Start-ups in London Libraries – network across the UK including 80 diplomatic visits to digitise and make available 800 a hub-and-spoke model of grassroots medieval manuscripts business support in ten London boroughs BUSINESS 13 BUSINESS CHAIRED CENL & IP CENTRES OVER the Conference of European HOST including three opened during the year National Librarians, made up of to international cultural events including in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, 2,000 PEOPLE 46 peer institutions from member Zee Jaipur Literature Festival, Africa Nottingham and Glasgow participated in UK-wide Start-up Day states of the Council of Europe Writes, and the Peking Opera on 21 September 4 Annual Report and Accounts 2018/9 Annual Report and Accounts 2018/19 5 Chair’s and Chief Executive’s introduction This was a year in which we reached the halfway over the past year. We were delighted to announce mark in our Living Knowledge 2015–2023 a further phase of the Endangered Archives strategy, a natural moment for reflection as well Programme, which has delivered over 360 projects as a redoubling of our efforts in pursuit of its goals. in over 90 countries since 2004. This is one of the Today, as in 2015, the context is as challenging Library’s most transformative contributions to as ever with a revolution in data and technology, knowledge and culture on a global scale – working increasing expectations from our users, and with local partners to ensure that archives at risk demand for more collaborative, open models of of destruction, through conflict or environmental access to information. As we enter this next phase conditions, can be preserved in perpetuity. of Living Knowledge, we do so with a new Chair Elsewhere in this report, you can read about the – Dame Carol Black, appointed in September 2018 large number of other international partnerships – and a new Chief Librarian, Liz Jolly, adding fresh the Library has now established, from France and expertise and perspective. China to the Middle East. These are an increasingly powerful driver of the UK’s cultural engagement The extraordinary response to our exhibition with the world. Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms: Art, Word, War, which attracted over 100,000 visitors across its run, The Library’s work continued to reach audiences was testament to an endeavour that only the throughout the UK through a set of thriving British Library could have staged on such a scale national networks. The Living Knowledge Network and to such effect. Four years in preparation, (LKN), which brings together 22 public libraries it was a confident articulation of so many parts with the National Libraries of Scotland and the Library also secured European Regional This work with the wider libraries sector, and of our Living Knowledge mission: a landmark Wales to share best practice, cultural offers, Development Funding through the GLA in order also with international partners, has added new cultural event, imaginatively researched and and networks, has concluded a hugely successful to deliver Start-ups in London Libraries, with dynamism and potency to our role as the national realised; a showcase for some of the most iconic two-year pilot which saw over a million people support from JP Morgan and Arts Council research library right at the centre of the UK’s objects we hold; and a complex international engaged. The next phase of the network will embed England. This will deliver business support knowledge economy. Increasingly, this role enables collaboration made possible by generous loans a new sustainable subscription model to underpin across 10 London boroughs. us to support cutting-edge new research initiatives, from eight institutions around the world its success. such as this year’s Living with Machines alongside 17 UK-based lenders. At the heart of all our national operations is our collaboration with the Alan Turing Institute – legal deposit system, working together with the one of the most ambitious digital humanities It was a once-in-a-generation moment, achieving There was an National Libraries of Scotland and Wales, Trinity projects ever to launch in the UK. The project such rare feats as reuniting the four principal College Dublin, Bodleian Libraries, and Cambridge will bring together data scientists, curators and manuscripts of Old English poetry and securing extraordinary response University Library. The collection and storage in academics to reveal new insights about the first the return to England, for the first time in 1,300 perpetuity of everything published in the UK is industrial revolution from mining the Library’s years, of the mighty Codex Amiatinus, the oldest to our exhibition such a well-established principle that it may vast digitised collections of historic newspapers surviving complete Bible in Latin, from Florence. sometimes be taken for granted, but this year and other content, in search of lessons to help Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms: gave us pause to reflect with the Government’s society navigate the ‘fourth industrial revolution’ Windrush: Songs in a Strange Land was equally Art, Word, War, which publication of a post-implementation review of the of our own era. timely and resonant with audiences. Our introduction of Non-Print Legal Deposit six years exhibitions are commissioned years in advance, attracted over 100,000 ago. This extended the principles of legal deposit The Library’s story is also, as ever, one of yet this one caught a moment of acute national to include digital content and the review highlights continuity across all of our purposes. We continue self-examination like few others.