This video has a correction: it turns out the formal interview requirement for a reader pass has been dropped since I joined. However, you'll still need to get a pass to use the BL, and you're not allowed to take books out of the reading rooms! You can see all corrections on the channel here: www.tomscott.com/corrections/

"We have to collect everything, because we don't know what will be important" This x100. We don't get to write our own history, but we DO get to decide what is preserved and what is forgotten! Huge respect for these people

I have mad respect for archivists. It's such insanely important work but so under appreciated.

CGP Grey taught me how important tracking down old articles and books are to proving/disproving myths.

I’m an academic library worker and I also work in archives, and it makes me so happy to see this. Most of our books are really esoteric but some of them happen to be the one surviving record of, like, a reproduction of an obscure painting or salamander populations in 1950-1970 or a zine a teenager handed out to his friends 40 years ago, and that detail turns out to be incredibly important to a researcher decades later.

The modern Library of Alexandria. Huge props to everyone involved in this project! This is crazy!

One paragraph in a tiny community newspaper from the mid-1800s helped me answer a family mystery of decades. It was just a social column, but I’m so glad someone preserved it over the years, just in case future me would need it. It was the key to finding a whole branch of our family during the civil war era! (Canadian here). Thank you archivists and librarians!

Now I'm picturing a dystopian book/movie in which the characters have to somehow scale those massive shelves, maneuver past the dusty, dead robots, and find the knowledge they need for the story

This reminds me of my days at university; I was in Houston, Texas, and needed some information published in an obscure book about computer programming. The only existent copy available at a lending library in the US was in Fairbanks, Alaska (at U Alaska Fairbanks), almost 4,000 miles (~6,400 km) away, or an almost 10 hour flight. If it wasn't there, my only other option would have been the Library of Congress in Washington DC, the equivalent of the British Library in the US, but it isn't a lending library so I'd have had to travel to DC to peruse the material. My librarian put in for an inter-library loan on a Tuesday, and I had the book in my hands the next Monday. I read what I needed Monday night (and I'll neither confirm nor deny going to Kinko's to make copies of the relevant chapters for later review as needed), and had it back on the way to Alaska on Tuesday. Modern libraries are, in a very real sense, truly amazing. A simple (free!) request, and a book makes a cross-continental journey.

There are actually six legal deposit libraries for the UK: the others are in Edinburgh, Aberystwyth, Cambridge, Oxford, plus the Trinity College Library in Ireland. But while the others can ask for works, the BL is the only one that doesn't (and can't) pick and choose what it takes. So for modern works, there's usually more than one backup copy somewhere, just in case!

I'm a librarian and a BL card holder - I love seeing the automation behind the scenes of such a national institution!

The importance of this was really hammered home when Tom said this is the raw text of history as it happened in response to Linda saying we can’t decide today what is important in 50 years’ time. The sheer scale of this archiving is amazing

This kind of thing is insanely cool, and the thing I massively agree with is that one point: We can't decide *now* what'll be important 50 years in the future. We literally *cannot know.* This is relevant in a *lot* of contexts, not just archival, and it's always nice to hear someone stress it like that.

As someone who works in a museum and has been in our archives, I'm glad we have oh so much random "junk". Maybe that advertisement for 2 for 1 deal on potatoes meant nothing to you at the time, but for us we have a well made pamphlet showing local business names, family names, prices, and commodities that were important in the 1800s. Edit: spelling.

This should be something the public of the UK should be proud of. Learning from history and Preserving the world’s (UK’s) literature. This is extremely long sighted. I’m super impressed

I'm not British but it makes me proud as a human that we have archives. I have high respects for archivers.

Oddly satifying that institutions like this exist

Legal deposit . Collecting all the literary material no matter how obscure , to preserve for posterity is really a gargantuan task . Thanks for the information. This was really useful to know .

The oldest book I’ve seen is the atlas coelestis by John Flamsteed, published 1729. It wasn’t published fully until after his death, as he was a perfectionist and wanted it to be perfect. Other astronomers got annoyed at the delays, most notably Issac Newton. Someone broke into Flamsteeds’ office and stole his notes and published the book without his knowledge of consent. When he found out he tried to find every copy and destroy them, he missed about a hundred.

So pleased to see this! We are a small charity that publishes four editions of our journals each year, plus one or two books annually too - and they're all stored in this building. They are very proactive too - if you forget to send them a copy of a periodical, they are aware and will contact you. It's fascinating to see what it looks like inside!

So, the question is, has Tom deposited his weekly newsletter with the British library for the UKWA?

Kinda happy that we live in a society where something like this exists.

I recently self published a book and sent a copy to the British Library, it’s fascinating to see where it ends up.

Love the extra effort put in to contact indie authors and self publishers. Everything is worth collecting and preserving. No work should get lost to time due to a lack of attention or financial success.

It also lists a copy of my PhD thesis, but the actual copy (now probably digital) is held by my university's library. It still is fun to search for it on the database and someone needing sleep can request a copy.

In Sweden, The Royal Library of Stockholm gets one copy of absolutely every printed matter printed in Swedish, including the local advert folders of supermarkets and so on provided the print is four pages. That library can´t throw anything away, they have to keep everything, the University libraries in Sweden are divided in two groups where one of them also has to keep everything and the other one can throw away some things after five years.

As a Librarian working at a National Library, I find the British Library really really fascinating. I am inspired every single time. Thank you so much for sharing this video.

Absolutely brilliant. I love the fact that archives like these exist. I was just talking about them yesterday, too. It's indeed hard to overstate the importance of these archives. The Netherlands has a massive media archive, too, where every single book, newspaper, but also television program and I think even radio transmission, is stored.

CORRECTION: You don't have to explain why you can't get what you need elsewhere in order to get a reading pass for the BL. That requirement was dropped in 2006, I believe. The requirement for an interview was dropped last year.

Oh, the joy this brings to that weird "don't throw that away, you might still need to refer to it later" -part in me! Gorgeous and strangely satisfying to not only *know* but to actually see that people value our human print-output ♥️

I'm anxious about data loss and the loss of knowledge so this type of thing comforts me, props to all these workers who are doing absolutely crucial work, as always with most things a lot of crucial jobs are underappreciated. Now I wonder if they'll really manage to keep up with the cheer amount of data we produce each day. Also does that mean this video is archived there?

this is such important work it's insane. future historians are going to be so grateful there were people in our age who took archiving seriously

This is the coolest thing I've seen all day! It feels like one giant book that contains all the books/information ever recorded.

I wrote most of my undergrad dissertation with the help of the British Library. You can't find many places with a copy of the British Museum's transcripts and complete translations of some of their cuneiform tablets that were published in the 1890s. You can tell a book is rarely checked out when some of the pages haven't even been cut yet.

The last 20 seconds of your video sums up a big reason why I find your video's so engaging, beyond of course being interesting. I don't think there is anyone else on KZfaq that comes off so genuine.

It can't be overstated how valuable archives like this are. And how much more valuable they'd be if they also preserved scans of everything that are freely accessible.

In Germany, you need to deposit two books. One goes to the library of the state in which it was published an the other goes to the national library with locations in Frankfurt and Leipzig.

Tom’s knack for timing is something only great comedians, great film editors, and great watch makers have.

This endeavor warms my heart. Speech, communication, and sharing knowledge are so core to humanity. Striving to preserve EVERY scrap of it feels like a monument to humanity.

Thank you not just for raising awareness, but also for minimising the barrier for participating by compiling templates & contact info

Finally, a library where I can find every Terry Pratchett book

In France, everithing print more than 9 times by a Professional printer, including ads and all that kind of thing, must send two copies, one for the national library, one for the departemental archives.

Really helped my genealogical research. Old newspapers with obituaries, a random book about several families that moved from Spain to the Netherlands in the 1600s, you never know what's important to people in 100 years.

Thank you so much for making a video about this as I had no idea about the digital archive of UK. I am a strong proponent of the need to have digital archive of the whole web in the form of archive org, and recent cases against it have been extremely disheartening. Hopefully humanity comes together in preserving knowledge, discussions and information, no matter the type.

If you decide to do a full victory lap of increasingly meta videos of places, concepts and tools that helped you create your own library of videos, spiraling ever closer towards your final video, I wouldn't even be mad.

Self-publish a book and send it to them, now that is a life goal. Imagine telling all your friends that you got into the legal deposit archive (without mentioning the fact that everything gets in, of course).

I’m so glad these efforts are being made. I’ve always been so impressed with the archive at the US National Library of Congress. When the lady in this video said “we can’t know what will be important in 50 years” it really resonated.

Tom’s videos are so great because they answer questions we didn’t even know we had. THANK YOU!

The US has this, but very recently there was a lawsuit that determined the required deposit of all copyrighted materials without payment was an illegal seizure. Unless the lawsuit judgement is reversed on appeal, the Library of Congress will need to pay for every book it wishes to possess and there is currently no budgetary authority to do so. Edit: This ruling was actually by an appeals court, so only a Supreme Court ruling could undo it.

I work for one of these archives in Denmark! We deal with public data more than books specifically, so everything ever saved in a public office, events, etc. Digital archiving is a mess. Systems are weirdly built, databases are over-engineered and we often get files that are so old that we need to run converters on old machines just to create access copies. It’s lots of fun though, and you get to preserve knowledge for the future which is just cool!

This was so interesting, and the lady you interviewed explaining that we have to keep everything as we don't know what will be important in the future is so true, I'd just never thought about it before. Incredible.

That is so cool! I hope it lasts forever, it's so sad the Library of Alexandria was destroyed. I can't even imagine the amount of knowledge is stored in the British Library.

These institutions must be protected to avoid the fate of the Library of Alexandria.

This is such a hugely important collection. I am so glad that the foresight was there to allow the archival of works for future generations.

I don’t know how else other than by Tom Scott I would have ever learned of resources like this. I hope that someday, after a long and well-deserved break, Tom will return to showing us the world - even if it’s on a more modest schedule.

Tom having his Space Shuttle launch piece-to-camera moment at the end there. Only not quite as spectacular.

I love the subtle change in his expression at 4:46 when he realizes it stopped at just the right moment

Given how you talk about how much you use it for your own research, it’s nice that you finally got round to making a video on this. Fascinating, would be a privilege to ever be looking for something so niche that I’ll have to borrow from there.

This is absolutely amazing, I had never heard of this. I sure wish there was a project like this for A/V media... There are so many games, movies, series, commercials, YT videos, etc. that seem to be forever lost to time

Sooo want more on this. This fills quite a few crosses of the vendiagram of my interests; mech storage, libraries, archives, semi-arcane legalistic fopery, etc.

This was a plot point in ascendance of a book worm I didn’t know it was a real law thought it was a overreach but makes sense

the more you explain the merrits and use as a historical archive to be studied, the more i stopped thinking "this is a waste of money" this is absolutely brilliant!

Love the work that's going on, its archavists like Garry that keep us all informed as to what happens, and makes us chant 'YORKSHIRE' 3 times anytime were mentioned ❤

This is so gobsmackingly fantastic. I wish it was longer. One could think archivists are stayed and of history but they really are at the forefront and about the future!

Oh, how delightful! I work for the equivalent in my country, and it was really cool hearing talk about the same issues we are dealing with. We just finished our fancy, new, LEED gold-certified preservation facility. I don't know if it's the same for the British facility, but our automated storage and retrieval system works in the dark, to save energy and ensure the best preservation conditions. We're still in the process of moving materials over to that building! It's a huge task.

The most surprising thing is Tom has not filmed this place before today.

Absurdly cool building and robots! Even though digital archives might well be much bigger in data size, moving the physical stuff around is somehow more cyberpunk than I anticipated. Really resonating with the 'we don't know what will be important' statement as well - that's foresight but so humble.

Born in the UK and I did not know this facility existed. Absolutely brilliant.

I wish I were a book

We don't often think twice about throwing away a promotional pamphlet we receive, and yet we find amusement and even learn from pamphlets from decades ago. I'm sure covid-related stuff would be so interesting to look back in the future. Glad they are trying to save everything!

Incredible! I love the fact that archives like these exist but I really wish more areas of media had similar goals of perseveration. The amount of lost media in terms of TV, Films, Music & Video Games is really disappointing.

That's very fascinating and I loved learning about the process! Keep up the GREAT work! :)

We need a compilation of perfectly timed Tom Scott moments, maybe a good one for Christmas/New Year special?

The deposit libraries are a marvel. The one in Finland is called Varastokirjasto (transl. Storage Library) and fullfills the same duty of storing "everything published in a nation". Less automated, though. I recall everything is stored in order of acquisition, and if any library is cleaning up their oldest collections, they should check from database that they have a sample.

Wow! It's dead cool to see such a sophisticated and elegant system and how it works. But also to get w peek into one of the resources that's part of your process!

Great job on the hand gestures today, Tom. Especially liked what you did with your left hand

By the way, if you haven't gone already, the British Library's exhibition hall is worth visiting. It is free, and (in case you didn't see it in the video), it is in a central London right next to St Pancras station, a block away from Kings Cross.

Tom, I just want to, on a personal note, say thanks. Mondays are often difficult, being Monday's and all, and being able to watch a new video from you during my lunch hour is one of the few Monday delights that I have. I appreciate all of the work you have put into this KZfaq project of yours, and I will miss it once it ends. So, many thanks. And hopefully, after January, we will all still get the occasional surprise from you to delight us all from time to time.

Not only is the scope and sheer volume of the British Library amazing, but to me this video also serves as an acknowledgement of all librarians that helped Tom research for his videos over the years

This concept makes me so happy because i hate loss of information and culture so this is right up my alley, if i didnt live such an active and chaotic life i would definitely have became a librarian i live to learn i just love chaos too so libraries are places to visit not work for me

The work Tom Scott is doing is also precious and should be preserved for the nation. Time flies when you're having fun; doubly so when you're older, we've just got to appreciate these moments while we can. I'm already pre-mourning the loss of this strand of Tom's videos.

Even the robots appreciate the Tom Scott quality and helped out at the end.

So interesting! And your energy makes every video so engaging :)

These kinds of knowledge repositories are so important. It's cool to see one from the UK, using an automated storage system (probably from SSI) that I've worked with previously. Those cranes really do zip around those tight corridors. "I do not know that it contains any branch of science which Congress would wish to exclude from their collection; there is, in fact, no subject to which a Member of Congress may not have occasion to refer." -Thomas Jefferson, speaking on the US Library of Congress when he submitted his personal collection for archival.

I really love the goal this archive has. Wish more countries had a similar mindset, and with more types of material. For example, artwork.

Not the video I opened KZfaq to look for, but KZfaq knew what I needed to see.

This huge, automated archive is giving me flashbacks to the door storage in "Monsters Inc."

I absolutely love that this exists and really appreciate the work of everyone working to preserve all this information!

I expected Gary, you know, the archivist, to show up in this video. This was very cool and I really appreciate the work archivists do every day.

wow this is just incredible. I hope the archive will be available for a long time in the future

I often get an existential morose feeling that things are just getting lost all the time, so seeing something like this is a huge relief on my mind.

As a booklover my heart is pumping right now.

I went to a similar place for tv, film and digital data in the Netherlands and got a look at their archives. It was incredible.

I love this. Archiving straight up everything is the way to go and should always be the aim.

Same with the Aussie National Library! Three immediate family members have their books down there!

Here's an interesting fact about the British library: it also holds legal deposit status for all books published in Ireland, not just the UK!

This is what I'm planning on doing for my career 😊😊 this video made me so proud. We study and preserve history for the future.

This is incredibly cool. Thanks for sharing!

Tom Scott nails it again. Awesome topic, well presented.

I work in an academic library and we get a lot of interlibrary loans from the Boston Spa facility when no other universities hold a copy to borrow, it's fascinating to see the inside of it and how it works!