Reading rooms in the British Library in London could be disrupted as staff stage a 24-hour strike on Monday.

Almost 1,000 employees may join the walkout after the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union rejected a pay offer.

However managers at the library say they are not sure what effect the stoppage will have on the service.

The reading rooms most likely to be affected are those at the St Pancras site and the Newspaper Library in Colindale.

Union leaders claim a 4% rise is not acceptable for the library's lowest paid workers, who earn as little as �12,000.

But library bosses insist lowest paid staff will receive a 5.6% rise and the 4% rise is just the average across all the staff.

Services disrupted

Some reading rooms may be shut by the industrial action if all the PCS members join Monday's walkout.

Library assistants who are members of the PCS will strike for a further two days on 30 and 31 July.

Managers hope that many of the staff will report for work as normal because they say only one in eight of the total workforce voted in favour of a strike and members of two other unions have accepted the pay offer.