When I was a student,  the circular Reading Room of the British Museum was like a club. Passes were only handed out to an exclusive few. Readers  who researched there - seated next to the ghosts of Karl Marx, Lenin and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle -   were highly privileged. Now the Reading Room is closed, and it has been superseded by the much more egalitarian British Library. A pass can be acquired simply by turning up with a passport and proof off address. 

I've become interested in the life of a Cambridgeshire MP and poet called Soame Jenyns, and recently spent a happy day in the Library looking at the parliamentary records from the years 1774-6. I didn't find what I was looking for, but I quickly learned how society was being shaped. Everywhere land was being enclosed, roads, bridges and canals were being built, and questions were being asked about the morality of slavery. 

This photo of the main entrance gives an idea of the huge scale of the Garde 1 listed building.  

This 3D picture is up on a wall near the cloakroom. As you walk by, it looks like a moving screen.