6 Minute English / What makes a great library?

Note: This is not a word-for-word transcript.

Hello. This is 6 Minute English from BBC Learning English. I m Neil.

And I m Beth.

Shhh! Quiet please! I m trying to read here, Beth!

Oh, excuse me! I didn t know this was a library.

Well, what exactly is a library? Have you ever thought about that?

Well, somewhere with lots of books I suppose, where you go to read or study.

A symbol of knowledge and learning, a place to keep warm in the winter, or somewhere to murder victims in a crime novel: libraries can be all of these things, and more.

In this programme, we ll be looking into the hidden life of the library, including one of the most famous, the Great Library of Alexandria, founded in ancient Egypt in around 285 BCE. And as usual, we ll be learning some useful new vocabulary, and doing it all in a whisper so as not to disturb anyone!

Glad to hear it! But before we get out our library cards, I have a question for you, Beth. Founded in 1973 in central London, the British Library is one of the largest libraries in the world, containing around 200 million books. But which of the following can be found on its shelves. Is it: