Our Business & IP Centre (BIPC) supports small business owners, entrepreneurs and inventors, and anyone with a business idea. Offering insights and access to free resources, training and events – both online and in-person – to help you start or develop your business.

Cyber incident update

We’re continuing to experience a major technology outage, as a result of a cyber-attack. The outage is still affecting our website, online systems and services, as well as some onsite services including Wi-Fi. We expect to restore many of our services soon, although some disruption is likely to continue for several weeks.

BIPC services currently available

The Business & IP Centre (BIPC) and Reading Room is located on Floor 1 in the British Library at St Pancras. Our staff here can provide advice on protecting your intellectual property, or guide you through turning your business idea into a reality. We also offer free access to our collections of business and intellectual property information and industry reports and insights to help you make informed decisions, and save time and money.

The Library in St Pancras remains fully open and our Business & IP Centre (BIPC) is open as usual too.

The following BIPC services are available:

• access to the BIPC Reading Room on Floor 1 – you will need a valid Reader pass to be able to access our Reading Room
• Reader Registration for new or lapsed Readers – however, we’re currently only able to issue temporary passes. The levels of access these provide may differ depending on whether you are a lapsed or new Reader
• one-to-ones offering expert advice and tailored support for whatever stage of your business journey you are at, in person or online. We cover a wide range of topics including intellectual property, funding and business planning. Please note that onsite business databases are currently unavailable and this may affect our business information clinics
• access to our free industry guides, from advertising to travel to international trade
• BIPC workshops, events and webinars at the British Library in St Pancras and online
• Get Ready for Business Growth, the BIPC's free scale-up support programme funded by Arts Council England, is also open for applications from creative businesses with £80k + turnover wishing to scale (further details about the programme are available in person).

We also have a wide range of business support on offer across our London Network and National Network of BIPC libraries:

• You can join BIPC events, workshops and webinars in person and online via BIPCs in borough libraries across London
• You can find additional business support in BIPCs within regional and local libraries across the UK. Discover your local BIPC.

Contacting us

While our systems are offline, you can contact the Library by emailing [email protected]. We’ll do our best to answer your queries but please bear with us. We’re experiencing a high volume of enquiries so it may take us some time to respond. We’ll get back to you as quickly as we can. We’d like to thank all of our users and partners for your continued understanding.

If you have specific questions relating to our business services, you’re welcome to come and speak to the Business & IP Centre (BIPC) team in person on the Floor 1 of our St Pancras site.

Where to find us: Floor 1, Business & IP Centre, British Library, 96 Euston Rd, London NW1 2DB

BIPC social media channels

For any queries and the most up-to-date information follow us on:

X (formerly Twitter)

Facebook

Instagram

LinkedIn

Useful links

While our website is unavailable, we’ve created a list of links that you may find useful.

BIPC events online

BIPC events at the British Library in St Pancras  

BIPC events within the London Network

Find regional events using our interactive map of BIPCs around the country

BIPC videos, including past events

BIPCTV

Local library services

Find out what your local library has to offer at LibraryOn.