Your impact
How will my gift help?
All donations will directly support our conservation work, helping us preserve our collection for generations to come.
Saving the most fragile and rare items in our collection
There’s no telling what one hour of conservation will do. From bookbinding and gold tooling to mould removal and replacement spines, our conservators have a wealth of knowledge that they can apply to most items in our collection.
£25 could provide an hour of conservation work on any one of the 170 million items in our collection.
Displaying history
Our collection holds items from nearly every period of written history, which we display for thousands of visitors to see. This Anglo-Saxon gospel leaf needs conservation to prepare it for future viewing in one of our ground-breaking exhibitions.
£50 could help us conserve an Anglo-Saxon gospel leaf to ensure its survival for another 1,000 years.
Helping us inspire the next generation
Any one of the millions of items in our care could inspire the next bestselling novel, a scientific breakthrough or historic development. Conservation ensures that fragile items can be handled by researchers who could change the world.
£100 could support essential maintenance on the box containing a Don Juan manuscript, handwritten by Lord Byron himself.
Providing intimate insight on the everyday of a royal prisoner
Four hundred and forty-four years after her imprisonment, this manuscript tells us more about how Mary, Queen of Scots lived as a royal prisoner of Queen Elizabeth I. Among expenses for soldiers, servants and stables, we also see that Mary feasted on oranges, figs and saffron as well as a large amount of mead, beer and wine.
£1,000 could conserve manuscript accounts of Mary, Queen of Scots’ imprisonment, detailing the daily life of a royal prisoner in 1584.