The Application of IT in the St Pancras Building of the British Library

Abstract

The new British Library building at St Pancras will depend heavily on IT systems. It will be used for basic reader services such as gaining access to the reading rooms, searching the catalogue, and retrieving items from closed storage and delivering them to the right reading room and reader. Systems for the main reader services, particularly the Online Catalogue, which have already been implemented in existing reading rooms, will continue to be developed before St Pancras opens; under current plans there will be 450 catalogue terminals in the completed building. These systems will make it possible to collect much more data on ways in which the building and services are used. Other IT systems will monitor and control the operation of the building itself. Even the exhibitions will have IT systems to augment the displays. Services that can be accessed remotely will also be offered by means of telecommunication networks. The completed system will comprise some 5,700 monitoring and control points distributed across about 110 outstations, all connected by a looped network into a central control supervisor.