Changes

Some books from the British Library's collection have been digitised. After you have found a catalogue reference through searching To locate these books search the British Library's main catalogue, refer below, and select Access options: Online (located on the left hand side of the webpage), For resulting book titles, click on "I want this". For books which have been digitised, one or more of the following sources will be available, and may then be selected*British Library's pdf download, said to be "good for reading large amounts of text". Now mainly or totally withdrawn.*British Library's itemVIEWER, said to be "good for images". Note 1. it is possible to rotate pages, if required. Note 2. it is not possible to navigate from page to page using the 'Full Screen' viewing option.This is only possible from the default page, which is a disadvantage when reading text. Check whether there is an alternative format available elsewhere e.g. Archive.org. Now mainly withdrawn, but some files remain in this format. A difficult format to read online.*British Library's Digital item, with a different format to itemViewer. These may be slow to load, and you may need to try a few times. For a larger book image, close the 'Contents' and 'More information' sections. More recent digital files appear to be in this third format, but currently there still appear to be earlier digitised files using the previous formats. An example is :[http://access.bl.uk/item/viewer/ark:/81055/vdc_0000000357DE ''Jottings and Recollections of a Bengal “Qui hye!”''] by Louis Emanuel [1886]:Theoretically you can download the entire book file, but in practice this may not happen - seek advice from the Library. To read the book online there is a "Full screen" option, located at the bottom right hand corner of the webpage.

To determine which books are available as Google Books, pdf downloads, itemVIEWER or other digital items: after searching the British Library's main catalogue, on the left hand side of the webpage screen, click on the option 'Refine my results/Access Options: Online' There are also digitised manuscripts available which may be located through Digitised Manuscripts Search, refer below. Some British Library documents India Office Records (books and files) are also available online through other sources such as the Qatar Digital Library.