BRITISH COUNCIL....

An organisation that creates opportunity worldwide
The British Council is the United Kingdom's leading cultural relations organisation and India is our largest operation worldwide. In India, we operate as a division of the British High Commission and have offices in the four main metros as well as a network of 9 libraries. Through our centres and programmes we promote the diversity and creativity of British society and culture. We do this by helping people to appreciate its vibrancy.

British Council outside India
We operate in 110 countries around the world, running similar programmes to those here. Mainly we enhance the UK's reputation and create opportunities for people by working in partnership with various individuals and organisations.

How we are funded
The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) provides us with a core grant-in-aid. We also work with other government departments and agencies, and increasingly with the private sector. On top of this we also provide services such as project management, UK-based training, English language courses and examinations.



What we do




Building relationships with people all around the world.
Here at the British Council our main goal is to build the UK's role as a leading provider of educational and cultural opportunities. We do this by promoting teaching and learning of the English language, while building relationships with people all around the world. Worldwide we have issued nearly eight million books and videos, dealt with almost two million enquiries in our libraries and welcomed five and a half million visitors. We have employed more than 1,900 teachers in 138 teaching centres around the world who have taught almost 1.2 million class hours.



Where we are



We are very well established in India and in the year 2000 we celebrated the 50th anniversary of our library network right here.

Our Libraries are in the following 11 cities:

Ahmedabad Bangalore Chandigarh Chennai
Hyderabad Kolkata Mumbai New Delhi
Pune Colombo Kandy






Our activities in these cities focus on:
Learning and teaching English
Education
Library and information services
Arts and culture
Rights and society
Science


Our broad range of interests mean that we have been able to organise over 3,000 arts events globally, more than 1,500 science events in over 60 countries and helped 13,000 young people take part in exchange projects.

We have been building face-to-face contacts and we now intend to reach millions of people through online and various other media.

British Council Online is one initiative helping us to achieve our goals of reaching millions of people, strengthening the cultural relations, English language teaching and spreading the international dimensions of learning and knowledge sharing.

It is an information site offering access to online information resources across a vast range of subjects, interactive English language lessons and work-place related learning modules.

British Library, Hyderabad

A favourite haunt of avid book lovers, the British Library Hyderabad, has something for everybone - individuals, families and corporates. You can spend your time browsing through our latest magazines, UK newspapers, contemporary British music CDs, the best of British film DVDs, self development training CDs and of course books – both fiction and non fiction. We regularly add to our collection by releasing new books on popular themes based on what you want. If you are a student aspiring to study in the UK or searching for a UK qualification like IELTS in India, simply stop by the British Library. Visit the British Library and be pleasantly surprised.

Our online library provides unlimited access to more than 40,000 e-books including key subject areas like Business & Economics, Computers & IT, Humanities, Science & Engineering and many more. The single easy-to-use online interface makes research quick and easy through powerful features such as InfoTools, personal bookshelves, automatic citations, highlighting, annotating and more. The advantages of using the online library are:

- No closing hours. The online library is open 24x7
- No book is off-the-shelf. Entire collection available all the time