National library of Great Britain. Besides books (more than 25 million items), journals and manuscripts, its vast collections contain photographs, newspapers, patents, maps, and music and sound recordings. It holds unique materials of great importance for European and world history. The most treasured holdings include Magna Carta, Leonardo da Vinci's Notebook, the first edition of The Times (1788), the recording of Nelson Mandela's Rivonia trial speech. The archives represent every age of written civilization – there are Chinese oracle bones over 3.000 years old and today’s newspapers’ issues.

Moreover, the British Library holds collections which could not have been gathered in different countries for institutional or ideological reasons, like the dissent materials and samizdat publications produced in socialist Poland.