Converting British Library reading rooms to co-working space undermines the library's core national purpose
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/profile/andybeckett. "If British Library reading rooms become ‘co-working spaces’, what, exactly, is a national library for? | Andy Beckett | The Guardian." October 29, 2026. www.theguardian.com
The Gist
The British Library says it needs money, so it plans to turn three of its reading rooms into co-working offices for hire. The author argues this will squeeze out the quiet research space that makes a national library valuable, make it harder for people from outside London to get a desk, and move the library away from its public purpose.
Conclusion
The British Library's plan to convert three reading rooms (over a quarter of its research space) into commercial co-working space is a mistake that threatens the library's fundamental purpose as a national library and should be viewed with alarm.
Premises
- The plan is driven by financial pressure: state funding has fallen in real terms to two-thirds of its 2010 level, reserves are perilously low, and a 2023 cyber-attack has not been fully recovered from. Underused-looking public buildings are vulnerable to commercialisation.
- The library's founding purpose, set out in law in 1972, is the establishment of a national library for the UK, and its reading rooms are the heart of its free, open and egalitarian research function.
- The quiet, semi-silent reading rooms offer a precious and increasingly rare kind of space that supports concentration and serious thinking, and they are in demand, with new young readers constantly arriving.
- Reducing the number of reading rooms will make the remaining ones fuller, so users from outside London, who also fund the library through taxes, will be less likely to secure a desk in time, and in peak periods desks already run out.
- The library is already straining under heavy use (long queues, broken toilets, worn lockers, failing ventilation), and the planned 2032 extension will contain no new reading rooms, suggesting reading room capacity is being deprioritised.
- Staff are furious and may strike, indicating that those closest to the library's work see the plan as a threat to its fundamental purpose.
Assumptions
- The reading rooms' research and study function is more central to a national library's purpose than revenue-generating co-working space.
- Co-working space for hire is a commercial activity that is not compatible with the library's open, egalitarian, uncommodified character.
- Half-empty reading rooms at the start and end of the day do not mean the space is wasted.
- The revenue from co-working space is not essential enough to justify the loss of research capacity, or alternatives exist.
- Reading room capacity will be a binding constraint after the conversion, so users will actually be turned away.
- Staff opposition reflects concern for the library's mission and not only job security.