The Library entrance is located at 165 Queen’s Gate, London, SW7 5HD.
Please be aware that Queen’s Gate is a different street, parallel to Exhibition Road, where the main Science Museum entrance is located.
When you arrive, please give your name at the reception desk. Then go down the staircase facing the entrance and turn right through the Library entrance. There is also a lift available, which a Science Museum colleague on the front desk can direct you to. Library staff at our information desk will welcome you and can help with your queries.
The library is open Monday to Wednesday, 10.00 to 16.00.
We are closed on all UK bank holidays.
Everyone is welcome to visit the Dana Research Centre and Library to use the space, enjoy our free public Wi-Fi, and access our modern and special collections materials.
Please note that—to all but Science Museum Group colleagues and Imperial College staff and postgraduates—we are a reference library, meaning users are more than welcome to consult materials in our collections within the library, but resources cannot be checked out or removed from the space.
While drop-in visits are welcome, if you have specific items from our collections currently held at the Science and Innovation Park in Wroughton, that you would like to view, we would appreciate it if you could please contact us at least four weeks in advance, so we can make sure to have them ready and available for you. You can find out where an item is located by looking at the catalogue record. If the “Home Library” is listed at “Science Museum Wroughton,” it is located off-site, and we will need this time to have it brought over to London for you. All archives and special collections materials, except for Corporate Archives, are located at the Science and Innovation Park.
Rare books and archives can be viewed by appointment in our London reading room on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays between 10.00 and 16.00.
If you are interested in accessing rare books or archival materials from our collections, please contact us at library.archive@sciencemuseum.ac.uk, including the details of the items you would like to see in your message. A member of our team will let you know if it is possible to facilitate your request and when we will be able to make the materials available to you.
The vast majority of our collections are held at the National Collections Centre in Wroughton, near Swindon. We therefore require at least four weeks’ notice to support a special collections research visit.
Please note that it will not be possible for us to provide access to additional special collections materials on the day of your visit, so do ensure that all information about what you would like to see is shared with us well in advance.
Rare books and archives can also be seen by appointment at the National Collections Centre at our Science and Innovation Park near Swindon or using our virtual reading room service.
Please be aware that researchers who have requested a large volume of material or who have requested oversized material will be asked to view it at the National Collections Centre, as there are limitations on what can be transferred to London and viewed at the London special collections research desks due to space constraints.
Many of the objects in the Science Museum’s collections have associated paper files containing additional information about the item and its history. These files can be viewed by appointment in the Dana Research Centre and Library on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays between 10.00 to 16.00.
We require at least one week’s notice to be able to support research visits to see object files.
To request access to these files, please email library.archive@sciencemuseum.ac.uk with the details of the object which you wish to learn more about. If you know the name of the object or the object number, it would be helpful to include this. This information can be found by searching our object collections.
A member of our team will let you know if it is possible to facilitate your request and when we will be able to make the materials available to you.
Address: The Dana Research Centre and Library
165 Queen’s Gate
London
SW7 5HD
Email: library.archive@sciencemuseum.ac.uk
Telephone: 020 7942 4242
