6 Minute English from BBC Learning English.com

Hello this is 6 minute English from BBC Learning English. I'm Neil and I'm Beth. Shh

Quiet please I'm trying to read here Beth. Oh excuse me I didn't know this was a

library. Well what exactly is a library?

Have you ever thought about that?

Well, somewhere with lots of books, I suppose, where you go to read or study.

A symbol of knowledge and learning, a place to keep warm in the winter, or somewhere to murder victims in a crime novel.

Libraries can be all of these things and more.

In this program, we'll be looking into the hidden life of the library, including one of the most famous,

the Great Library of Alexandria, founded in ancient Egypt in around 285 b.c.C. E and as usual we'll be learning some useful new vocabulary

and doing it all in a whisper so as not to disturb anyone.

Glad to hear it.

But before we get out our library cards, I have a question for you, Beth.

Founded in 1973 in Central London, the British Library is one of the largest libraries in the world, containing around 200 million books.

But which of the following can be found on its shelves?

Is it A, the earliest known printing of the Bible, B the

first edition of the Times newspaper from 1788, C the original manuscripts of the Harry Potter books.

I'll guess it's the first edition of the famous British newspaper, The Times.

Okay, Beth, I'll reveal the answer at the end of the program.

Libraries mean different things to different people, so who better to ask than someone who has written the book on it?

Literally, Professor Andrew Petagree is the author of a new book,

A Fragile History of the Library.

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