Library collections

Management and curation

The Department of Library and Information Services is a reference library for the biological and earth sciences.

General and Zoology Libraries

The General Library collection embraces multidisciplinary subjects including biodiversity, molecular biology, ecology, evolution, curation, biographies of naturalists and general reference materials. There are also atlases, gazetteers, and Ordnance Survey and topographical sheet maps, abstracting publications and CD-ROMs.

Front cover of Australasia by Alfred Russell Wallace, 1893

The Zoology Library collection contains literature on all groups of living animals except arachnids and insects.

The Tring Library is the Museum's principal source for avian literature. Additionally, there are many general natural history and travel works published before 1940 including some not represented in the holdings at South Kensington. The Tring collections are distributed in two libraries - all general natural history, and travel and ornithological monographs pre-1938 in the Rothschild Library, and all ornithological journals and post-1938 monographs in the Ornithological Library. In total these libraries hold 570,000 bound volumes, over 60,000 original drawings 20,000 photographs, and take 5,000 current serial titles.

Further information and enquiries for the General and zoology libraries.

Botany Library

The Botany Library contains more than 35,000 monographic titles dating from 1475, and 2,000 periodical titles dating from the late 1700s. Manuscripts and an outstanding collection of botanical artwork, which is one of the largest in the country, complement this material.

Together, these represent the entire modern period of botanical scientific discovery. The literature held gives world subject coverage in floras, plant taxonomy, economic botany, botanical art, history and biography for flowering and non-flowering plants, with limited coverage of the fungi.

Further information and enquiries for the Botany library.

Entomology Library

The Entomology Library provides comprehensive coverage of most aspects of entomology, including insect taxonomy, nomenclature and world faunas. On a selective basis, the collection also includes agricultural, medical and veterinary literature, insect physiology, the history of entomology and biographical material. The Library has responsibility for the arachnid book collection, which includes spiders, millipedes, mites and ticks. The Library includes 90,000 volumes, 1,000 current serial titles, 40,000 original insect drawings and over 350 manuscript collections.

Further information and enquiries for the Entomology library.

Earth Science Library

The Earth Science Library contains three distinct collections - the Palaeontology, the Mineralogy and the Anthropology Libraries - which collectively cover all earth science subjects and physical and biological anthropology. The combined collections contain 130,000 monograph volumes, 6,000 serial titles (3,500 current), 80,000 geological maps, 4,000 manuscript collections and 12,000 drawings, prints and paintings. The collections also contain microforms and photographs.