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This article reports on the projects of The British Library in London, England as of June 2004 that make material from the library and other collections available to researcher and user around the world. The Turning the Pages project is an exhibit which makes images of some of the world's great treasures available to the public with technology that allows visitors to turn the pages of a digital document on a touch-screen display. Ten manuscripts are featured in the collection. The oldest is the Lindisfarne Gospels, a work that dates to the early eight century. On April 7, 2004, The British Library announced the Endangered Archives Programme, an $18 million project to preserve threatened records around the world. The project hopes to counter threats to historical and cultural records form wars, natural disasters, ignorance and neglect. A new Web site was launched in April 2004 that charts the life and voyages of Captain James Cook. It display material from the British Library, the Captain Cook Birthplace Museum and other archives in England's North East. In May 2004, The British Library announced the Archival Sound Recordings project. This project aims to digitize 12,000 items of sound recordings from The British Library's Sound Archive.

Informs that The British Library will provide updates the British National Bibliography (BNB) CD-ROM records weekly via the Internet. Software that will enable subscribers to download and search new BNB book records; Statement from Clive Field, director of scholarship and collections at The British Library, that the development demonstrates the library's commitment to improved access to its collections.

Reports that the Patent Express copy service of the British Library (BL) was discontinued on June 5, 2002. Collection of international patents which is maintained by the BL; Idea that the BL has closed the service for economic reasons; Patent copy services which are available, including services from Minesoft.

The article reports that the British Library, London, England, has become a general member of the Research Libraries Group Inc. (RLG). According to RLG president James Michalko, the British Library's decision to join gives RLG the wonderful opportunity to make real the rhetoric about the internationalization of, scholarship. RLG will look forward to working with the British Library staff, and perhaps with some of their European colleagues, to really make global connections among the various communities of scholars that will serve all our interests. One of the British Library's peer institutions is Harvard University, which also recently became a general member of RLG. Two areas of expected collaboration within the RLG framework are collection preservation and the enormous challenge of online access to the world's historic collections, of which those at the British Library and Harvard University are two prime examples. With the British Library an active RLG member, London will become RLG's European hub for telecommunications with its information system, RLIN.