The largest library in the world, with the broadest collection of books and the most motley array of ghosts of those who once haunted its Reading Room: Dickens was here, and Thackeray; Ruskin called it his place of business; Karl Marx researched Das Kapital here. Of the 48 copies of the Bible printed by Gutenberg (36 on paper and 12 on vellum), one of each reside here—together with one copy of every book published in England since 1842 (and a large number published earlier). Immense and inefficient, its space and staff much too small for its task of serving readers, writers, researchers, and posterity, the British Library embraces all human effort, and seeks to catalogue whatever has been committed to print. (27 minutes)