Talk:British Library

"AD"

See Manual of Style: "In general, omit CE or AD unless needed to avoid ambiguity or awkwardness."---Ehrenkater (talk) 15:03, 23 February 2021 (UTC)

Need someone to scan a microfilm at St Pancras

Hi, I need a London Wikipedian willing to go to St Pancras and scan a microfilm for me for a WP:RX request. I've been trying to get this text for several months now so any help would be appreciated! Here is the WP:RX request, with the details: WP:WikiProject Resource Exchange/Resource Request#Need a microfilm from St Pancras, London (British Library).

Thanks very much for any and all help! Softlavender (talk) 04:28, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

GA concerns

I am concerned that this article no longer meets the good article criteria. Some of my concerns are listed below:

• There is a lot of uncited prose throughout the article.
• Most of the article text is listing the library's collection. I think this is more promotional than encyclopdic, and at a minimum should be moved to its own list article or removed altogether.
• The "Using the library's reading rooms" section also reads as promotional: this should be rewritten to be encyclopedic.
• The information in the article is very disorganised: I struggled to find information about recent historical events, "Other projects" is splitting up information about the collections, and I do not understand the layout order. This should be reorganised more effectively.

Is anyone interested in fixing up this article, or should it go to WP:GAR? Z1720 (talk) 00:49, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

I don't agree at all about these points. Words fail me as to why detail about the library's collection should be considered "more promotional than encyclopdic [sic]"! This is the core of the subject's notability; it has what is pretty much the world's best and certainly most comprehensive collection of manuscript and early printed books. The article does a typically Wikipedian disservice to the reader by not making this clear, no doubt because of the usual paranoia about "peacock" and "promotional" material. This failing would be my main issue with the article. You wouldn't make this complaint about an art gallery. The same for the next point; beyond what it contains and how to access the holdings, what else would readers be interested in? It's a library - what "recent historical events" do you think there are likely to be? As it happens they had a bad hacking of their systems (last year I think), which should be mentioned - oh, I see it has its own section, and indeed article - British Library cyberattack. No, I am, not interested in fixing it up, but I will strongly resist attempts to have the collection "moved to its own list article or removed altogether", as I think will others. Johnbod (talk) 03:50, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

I entirely agree with Johnbod's points: the article is in no way "promotional". In addition, I see no justification for your complaint about "a lot of uncited prose throughout the article". There are 165 footnotes, spread pretty evenly throughout. If there are any specific statements you feel are questionable and unsupported, please tag them; but I'm not seeing it. GrindtXX (talk) 12:23, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

Some responses below:

• Regarding the collections: it is appropriate, and probably necessary to fulfil 3a of WP:GA?, to have prose about the collections. However, in my opinion this prose should be about the topics in the collections, with some mention of the most important works. The "Newspapers" section does this well: it mentions what is in the collection (British and Irish newspapers, but not listing every single one), how it got there, where it is, and how to get access. "Highlights of the collections" contains over 7,000 words, while the rest of the article is about 3,600. That section is no longer a highlight of the collection, but rather a large list. Since this is not a list article, it would be more appropriate to move the list of books and manuscripts to its own list article. Furthermore, articles over 9,000 words are recommended at WP:TOOBIG to have information spun out, of which this section is probably the best place to do this. Yes, I would make this same complaint about an art gallery: the article should not list every piece of art within the gallery, but rather have a few of its highlights be mentioned.
• Regarding recent events: I think this article could be better organised so that historical events (like the hacking incident) are grouped together, not spread out amongst the article.
• Regarding uncited prose: GrindtXX I added citation needed tags to the places where citations might be necessary.

Those are my thoughts. Z1720 (talk) 14:22, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

@GrindtXX: There's still some uncited text in the article. Are you willing to address this? Z1720 (talk) 15:21, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

GA Reassessment

British Library

Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch • Watch article reassessment page • Most recent review

Result pending

There is lots of uncited text in the article, including entire paragraphs. A large part of the article is a list of what is in their collections, which I think can be spun out and some highlights written in a couple paragraphs of prose. Z1720 (talk) 22:45, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

Unless absolutely necessary for length reasons, I'd certainly disagree with spinning off the collection highlights, which are surely the main interest of the article. What's the readable prose length? Gutting an article like that is by itself an argument for removing GA status. Otherwise it's just a very big library with mostly the same printed books as other very big libraries. It's in the nature of the BL that "a couple paragraphs of prose" (sic) is nowhere near enough, and that short coverage would badly unbalance the article. You are completely ignoring the strong rejection of this suggestion in October (article talk) and just ploughing on with your personal view regardless, despite no one else supporting it. Why are you not showing the early part of the GA review, with all this? Johnbod (talk) 22:54, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

@Johnbod: I think the "Periodicals and philatelic collections" section does an excellent job showcasing how the library's collection can be written as prose, instead of as a list. Discussion did take place on the article's talk page after I brought up my concerns there. My review in the introductions of this GAR concerns my issues with today's article version: the list of collections is included in my concerns and can be addressed by other editors below. Uncited text throughout the article would also have to be resolved before I recommend this article "keep" its GA status. Z1720 (talk) 23:36, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

Yes, "Discussion did take place on the article's talk page after I brought up my concerns there", at Talk:British_Library#GA_concerns. Two editors (I was one) stated their disagreement with you on the point of splitting-off the list; that was it. Johnbod (talk) 01:11, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

Perhaps a different problem, but I'm not a fan of the organisation here: loads of L2 headers, no real hierarchy or sense of coherency. For instance, we have an L2 header for the recent cyberattack (incidentally, the info here is now out of date, as things are back up and running), which is preceded by a few other sections that could loosely be termed "history"... except that we've then got "Using the library's reading rooms" slapped into the middle. The uncited text is a bigger problem, but I wouldn't pass this under 1b at the moment even if everything were cited. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 18:42, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

I nearly fell off my chair when I saw UC's comment "I'm not a fan of the organisation" until I realised this referred to the text of the article rather than to the BL itself. The organisation of the text doesn't greatly bother me at GA level, but having thirteen "citation needed" tags – all of them justified – decidedly does. I'm uneasy about the "Highlights of the collection" section, too. I'm with Johnbod rather than Z1720 on the continued presence of the list, but it contains well over 300 statements, fewer than 60 of which have their own citations. If the vague phrase at the head of the list "Highlights, some of which were selected by the British Library, include ..." purportedly covers all the others (and I doubt it) this needs to be explicit in every case. It would, in my view, take an enormous, not to say unreasonable, amount of effort to bring the citations in this article up to scratch. If anyone is willing to undertake that I take my hat off to him/her, but as things stand I think there is a strong prima facie case for removing the GA status. – Tim riley talk 09:21, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

Afterthought: I see the editor who promoted the article to GA in 2011 was me, but it was then only 2,217 words long and adequately cited. It has since grown to more than 12,000 words including the lists and that's where the lack of citations has crept in. Tim riley talk 09:29, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

Work is being done on the text citations, by SchroCat and others. The majority of the manuscript "highlights" have their own articles, & I'm dubious about the necessity of doing the tedious work of bringing over the links there to the list. The list could be somewhat reduced, in the case of MS perhaps to only those with articles. Johnbod (talk) 16:35, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for that Johnbod. I'll suspend judgement until SchroCat has finished his work on the text. Tim riley talk 17:38, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

• Thanks for rearranging, UC. That makes a lot more sense now.
  The whole Highlights section is a barrel of OR, based on what people think looks interesting. There is no supporting citations that say each of the pieces is a highlight (there’s a citation at the start of the list (ref 106) to a BL page that lists just fifteen pieces, which is considerably less than the extensive lists. - SchroCat (talk) 19:41, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

"Here are just 15 of our treasures, chosen to show the range of our unique collections...." I don't think this claims to show anything like all highlights, but concentrates on diversity. No doubt they have produced many such lists at times, for different purposes. Several of these ones are not in our list - at least two are printed books. Johnbod (talk) 20:07, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

Personally, I'd be in favour of spinning out an article on Collections of the British Library (especially as some sub-collections already seem to have their own article) and using that as a means to drastically reduce the volume of this parent article, but I'm not sure that would be a make-or-break matter for me as far as retaining GA status is concerned. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 20:39, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

If the list is going to stay, it would probably need a whole bunch of citations. I think it would be easier and more beneficial for this article to follow UC's suggestion above to spin out this section of the article. Z1720 (talk) 23:43, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

So you keep saying. I repeat, I don't think it can be GA if that is done. Is it in fact necessary "to drastically reduce the volume of this parent article"? Yes, several parts of the collection have their own articles, mainly those that arrived from previously-existing collections. I don't really see how that affects the list in this article. Unless you know that something is in the rather haphazard group called Royal manuscripts, British Library, you won't be able to find it. I accept "highlights" may not be the right word. Johnbod (talk) 00:44, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

• I think a 'Collections' page would certainly be beneficial (after all, we have dedicated pages for things like the Philatelic Collections and the Cotton library, so why not) The Collections section on this page would then be whittled down to something more manageable and useful - and something that can be properly sourced, rather than the OR collection of 'Things that look interesting from a long time ago', which is what makes up the list at the moment. Trying to wade through the Maps, music, manuscripts and literature section is like being mugged by a gang of particularly aggressive blue links. - SchroCat (talk) 08:32, 28 December 2024 (UTC)
  • Agreed with SchroCat. I really can't see any reviewer looking at the "Highlights" section and determining that it meets 3b (it stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style). (emphasis mine). UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 09:29, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

    Agreed. Recommend splitting and leaving a summary style overview in that section rather than the full list. czar 03:42, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

Missing citations

I've covered most of the citation needed tags, but there are four left. There's no info on the BL website (it's still a skeleton version because of the hacking problem), and the archive site isn't clear on these points. Some of the connections may not be valid any more and I've taken out some bits which are definitely out of date, but I've left those four in place as I can't confirm or deny if the BL is still actively involved. (TRILT, for example, has been renamed and the new website (https://learningonscreen.ac.uk/) makes no reference to the BL, nor does anyone from the BL sit on the executive committee, but I can't find anything that says the BL was previously connected, but no longer is). I suspect (pure guesswork) that some of the services may be suspended—or at least access to the services is suspended—while the IT problems are being sorted, but the skeleton site doesn't make it clear what's happening. - SchroCat (talk) 12:11, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

Some of these may help:

• I found this chapter (preprint of the text here) which goes into some detail on the BL's web archiving system, and makes the comparison with the BNF (though doesn't explicitly say that the process is based on that of the BNF): some perhaps-useful posts from the BL blog here, here (with outlinks to reports from UK papers) and here, the last of which confirms that the process was ongoing into mid 2023.
• On radio archiving, we have this BL blog. I know blogs aren't generally good sources, but here I think we have an exception to report the barest facts of what an institution announced it was doing. This BBC page suggests that Redux was practically dead by 2022.
• There's some material in this report for JISC about the BL's role in archiving/allowing access to BBC materials. Again, not the world's best source, but the author is an academic and the company seems like a reputable enough quasi-academic institution.
• This thesis talks a lot about BBC archiving, but doesn't mention the BL except at arm's length (e.g. specific senior people from the BL being involved in discussions). It does have a 2008 web page on the history of BBC redux in the biblio, but frustratingly the link is dead and not available on Internet Archive.
• The section we currently have on the BL's digital resources is cribbed largely from this BL blog post from 2012. It says that the BL collaborated with the BBC on BBC Pilot, and recorded the stuff on Broadcast News, but doesn't take any credit for TRILT. In fact, looking at what's written there, it sounds much more like the BL simply bought a licence to use TRILT (like many schools do), which I wouldn't say is really notable (they probably have a JSTOR subscription as well, but we don't need to mention that in their article).

UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 09:34, 1 January 2025 (UTC)