Introduction

Welcome to the world's largest social sciences library

The Library of the London School of Economics and Political Science (also known as the British Library of Political and Economic Science) responds to around 5000 visits from students and staff each day. In addition, it provides a specialist national and international research collection, serving over 12,000 registered external users each year.

The Library collects material on a worldwide basis, in all major European languages. The extensive collections range from a European Documentation Centre to 90,000 historical pamphlets, with over 95% of Library stock available on open access. 50 km of shelving - enough to stretch the length of the Channel Tunnel! - house over four million items including 32,000 past and present journal titles. The Library subscribes to approximately 20,000 e-journals, just part of its electronic information provision.

All collections held at LSE in the Library have been recognised for their outstanding national and international importance and awarded 'Designation' status by the Museums Libraries and Archives Council (MLA).

Unusually for an academic library, all materials are housed in a single site - the Lionel Robbins Building, named after the prestigious economist who studied, taught and was a governor of LSE. Following a stunning multi-million pound building redevelopment, this is a superb environment for individual and group study. 1,740 study places include 450 networked PCs and 200 laptop drop-in points. The Library has amongst the longest opening hours of any university library in Britain, opening late into the evening, at weekends, and for 24 hours during exam time.

The Library is also home to a number of national and regional initiatives, including the International Bibliography of the Social Sciences which has been indexing social science literature since the 1950s.

Founded in 1896, the Library today is truly a 21st century resource.

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