Brief History

The Science Museum library was founded in 1883 as the Science Library of the South Kensington Museum (which also had Art and Education Libraries), and had grown into an important national science library by the 1930s, an active role we continued right through the second world war. From the 1950s and '60s other national libraries were set up which gradually took over this role and came together as the British Library, while we developed our specialism in the history of science and technology, as a key part of the Science Museum.

In 1992 we linked our operations with the adjacent Central Library of Imperial College London to form the Imperial College & Science Museum Libraries, providing a coordinated library system of complementary services and shared stock. The books and periodicals of both libraries were to be found together in subject collections anywhere in the building, but the focus of the Science Museum Library was the Science and Technology Studies collection.

Due to the increasing demand for space in South Kensington, an in-depth Strategic Review during 2002-2005 recommended the relocation of the Library's original printed collections and archives from the library's stacks and other museum storage areas to the museum's airfield site in Wroughton, on the edge of Swindon in Wiltshire. Here they would join the museum's large objects, already stored here in several World War 2 aircraft hangars. In addition, longer term plans were already being developed to create another huge new publicly-accessible facility to house the museums' remaining stored objects from London when funding became available.

During 2006, a large archive & library store was built inside a hangar, and some 90% of the collection moved from the poorer quality storage in London to this new high quality accomodation, nearly filling its 18km of stacks. During 2007 an adjacent building was completely refurbished to form a new library and archives reading room with study spaces for thirty researchers, staff facilities, and a further 8km of high quality storage. Finally we moved the rarest and most heavily used collections into this building and set up the reading room facilities, ready to open for access.

SML Swindon now houses the primary and original literature, reflecting over five hundred years of publishing of journals, books and reports on a very wide range of scientific and technical subjects, including many works in foreign languages. There are also special collections containing rare and unusual items, and the archives collections are also housed and made available here.

SML London continues to house the Science & Technology Studies Collection, containing the secondary and contextual literature, the histories of the development of the sciences and the branches of engineering, and their application to human life including areas such as agriculture, medicine, transport and industry, and also the biographies of scientists and engineers. The collection in South Kensington serves as a contextual introduction to the collections at Swindon, as well as itself being of international significance.