The materials are from a collection that was originally part of the private library of the Earls of Crawford. During the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the 26th Earl made a number of purchases at auction to build up the collection. In the first half of the twentieth century his son then gifted (although some items were a semi-permanent loan) them to The John Rylands Library. This collection is a fantastically rich resource for the study of France and its traditions.

This digitised collection originated from a project funded by The John Rylands Research Institute. The project was directed by Professor Bertrand Taithe with research by Dr Alexander Fairfax-Chomeley. They focussed on a collection of over 10,000 proclamations and broadsides, now categorised as the European Proclamations and Broadsides Collection. The collection spans a period from c1530 to 1890 and covers much of the European continent.

We invite you to explore the collection, available now on Manchester Digital Collections.

For more insight visit The John Rylands Special Collections blog.

Accredited Archive Services ensure the long-term collection, preservation and accessibility of our archive heritage. Accreditation is the UK quality standard which recognises good performance in all areas of archive service delivery. Achieving accredited status demonstrates that The University of Manchester Library has met clearly defined national standards relating to management and resourcing, the care of its unique collections and what the service offers to its entire range of users.

The University of Manchester Library holds one of the largest and most diverse collections of archives in the UK, spanning many centuries and covering a vast range of subjects. The archives are managed by a team of professional archivists and other specialists within the Library’s Curatorial Practices Directorate.

The Accreditation Panel said it “welcomed this application from a highly effective service which has done impressive work in its strategic positioning, with staff skills and in provision for its collections in all formats. They considered the service highly accreditable, and congratulated the team on the strength of their work.”

Highlights of the archives include:

• The archives of Hester Thrale-Piozzi, friend of Samuel Johnson and the centre of a brilliant literary circle, and of Mary Hamilton, Georgian royal governess, diarist and bluestocking.
• Papers of the novelist Elizabeth Gaskell, including literary manuscripts and correspondence with Charles Dickens and Charlotte and Patrick Brontë, and the papers of other 19^th-century literary figures such as George Gissing and John Ruskin.
• A host of modern literary archives, including the vast paper and digital archives of Carcanet Press, renowned poetry publisher.
• An increasing number of popular culture and counter-culture archives including those of Jeff Nuttall and Dave Cunliffe.
• The most important collections in the world relating to the history of Methodism, including the connexional archives of the Methodist Church in Britain and the largest collection of papers of John and Charles Wesley, as well as the world's largest archive relating to the Plymouth Brethren.
• Major scientific and medical archives, including the papers of John Dalton, James Joule, Sir Harry Platt and Nobel laureate Sir Konstantin (Kostya) Novoselov, as well as archives relating to Manchester’s pioneering role in the development of computing and the Lovell Telescope at Jodrell Bank.
• Industrial archives relating to the Lancashire cotton industry including those of Rylands & Sons.
• The vast archive of the (Manchester) Guardian newspaper, a key resource for international affairs in the late 19^th century and first half of the 20^th century.

The keyworkers of their time, the women photographed by Reavil are depicted in both urban and rural settings. They are documented performing critical roles such as repairing roads, working in factories and driving buses. They worked as mechanics, foresters and police. Many of these jobs were previously the sole preserve of male workers and would be closed to women in the period immediately after the war as servicemen returned to their jobs.

These images are a testament to a time when ordinary people stood up to ensure that life could continue as best as possible. The work that women undertook for the country was instrumental in the acceleration of women’s rights to the forefront of the popular imagination.

We invite you to explore the collection and draw parallels from then and now. In the image “Bus Conductress” (pictured) we see adverts and safety messages that echo today’s "stay safe" and "stay alert".

The album is available to view now via Manchester Digital Collections

For more insight into the album, visit The John Rylands Library Special Collections blog

• View Manchester Digital Collections

Research opportunities

Manchester Digital Collections allows University of Manchester academics to curate digital editions of important items from the collections, contextualising them and bringing their research on the collections to a wider audience.

Manchester Digital Collections is launching today with the following collections:

• Hebrew Manuscripts
• Latin Manuscripts
• Maps
• Manchester Museum
• Mary Hamilton Papers
• Persian Manuscripts
• Peterloo
• Petrarch
• The Whitworth

A cross-institutional collaboration

The image viewer has been led by Dr Guyda Armstrong, Faculty Lead for Digital Humanities, in close collaboration with:

• Cambridge University Library,
• The University of Manchester Library,
• The John Rylands Research Institute,
• IT Services,
• The School of Arts, Languages and Cultures,
• Manchester Museum, and
• The Whitworth.

Access to email archives is fraught with technical, legal and ethical issues. As a result, many contemporary writers risk falling off a 'digital cliff': drafts of their works and email correspondence with fellow authors, publishers and critics may soon be unreadable. Even when libraries are able to preserve these records, access is restricted by issues of data protection and confidentiality.

These issues will be tackled using the funding for the Palladium project (Providing Access to Large Literary Archives in a Digital Medium). The project has been awarded over £87,000 from Arts Council England’s Designation Development Fund to address these challenges.

The focus of the project will be the archive of Carcanet Press, a Manchester-based poetry publisher, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2019. The University of Manchester Library’s Special Collections holds the archives of Carcanet Press and the project will explore ways to provide literary scholars and other audiences with access to 350,000 emails within their archive.

The project will ensure the long-term, sustainable preservation and management of these extraordinary research resources, and develop innovative means of access to them for a wide range of audiences.

It will also explore the potential for email archives to support new areas of digital scholarship, such as data visualisations, and it will invite creative responses from artists and writers.

Petrarch is most well known as a poet but he was also a prolific scholar, and is often cited as the “father of humanism”. He was an extremely influential figure at the beginning of the Renaissance, and his works were instrumental in the formation of the modern Italian language.

The project focussed on material produced in Italy between 1350 and 1650 that examined or provided a commentary on Petrarch’s works, cataloguing more than 400 individual manuscripts and 300 early printed books. They illustrate the incredible impact of Petrarch’s poetry during his life and for hundreds of years afterwards.

Dr Guyda Armstrong and Julianne Simpson led on the project’s online digital library. This library encompasses approximately 84 works housed in The John Rylands Library and 14 further editions from the Special Collections of the Hesburgh Library at the University of Notre Dame, USA.

The digital library, which is available to anyone via Manchester Digital Collections, presents not only images of digitised books and other items but interpretation providing the viewer with interesting insights.

It is hoped that the project will open up new directions for research around one of Italy’s best-known medieval poets.

The digitised works can be viewed online now, via Manchester Digital Collections.

For instance, Dr Joanne Edge has, since August 2018, been improving and digitising the Latin Manuscripts Catalogue. This provides a foundation for further improvement to be done in future.

There are some truly stunning examples of medieval manuscripts in the collections, including the beautifully illuminated 12^th century Beatus of Liébana’s commentary on the Apocalypse of St. John (pictured) and even an account book for King Edward II for the years 1323-24.

The material had been partially catalogued in the 1920s and the 1970s, so we had a starting point for completion of the cataloguing – albeit partly in “scribbled on typed up notes”!

The launch of our new online image viewer, Manchester Digital Collections, allowed Dr Edge the opportunity to compile and continue the cataloguing work online. This also means these manuscripts are available to anyone to view and enjoy.

There are many benefits to digital cataloguing of material, creating a living record, as Dr Edge notes:

What’s more, this content is now available to other scholars around the globe. In the case of the Edward II account book, it provides valuable context for Edward II scholars, many of whom are now able to access this item more easily.

The collection is available to view now via Manchester Digital Collections.

You can read more about Dr Edge’s work on The John Rylands Library Special Collections Blog.

Following months of improvement works, our newly refurbished Special Collections Reading Room has now reopened.

The renovated Reading Room, on the fourth floor of The John Rylands Library, features a fully redesigned workspace, improved security and enhanced care of our precious collections.

Readers can now benefit from newly-installed lockers within the reception area for storing belongings, chairs adapted for enhanced reader comfort and changes to the reception desk and exterior to reduce the noise from other areas of the building.

The works also mean that we’ve been able to increase the capacity of the Reading Room from 22 to 26 study spaces.

More details about how you can access the Reading Room can be found on the Library website. We look forward to welcoming you.

Curated by Professor Peter E. Pormann and Dr Natalia Smelova in collaboration with The John Rylands Library, the exhibition is based on ground-breaking research resulting from the AHRC-funded project ‘The Syriac Galen Palimpsest: Galen's On Simple Drugs and the Recovery of Lost Texts through Sophisticated Imaging Techniques.’ The international team of scholars working on this project has revealed how medieval Syriac Christians in the Middle East shaped medical knowledge.

What’s in the exhibition?

Visitors can view the Syriac Galen Palimpsest and cutting edge multi-spectral images of its hidden undertext side by side. Other items on display trace the surprising roots of modern medicine, from mysterious occult books and talismanic objects through to medical textbooks from Renaissance Europe.

What is a palimpsest?

Around 900 years ago, Syriac creators erased some of their predecessors’ original writing, recycled the materials and overwrote the manuscript with a new text, creating a palimpsest – a multi-layered manuscript with a visible overtext and an undertext, mostly invisible to the naked eye.

As researchers using advanced imaging techniques began deciphering traces of the original undertext, they were able to identify the medical text hidden underneath the religious writings as an early translation of an important work by the ancient Greek thinker Galen of Pergamum. In this palimpsest, the Syriac translators created a link through which the great thinkers of the medieval Arabic speaking world could access the ancient wisdom of classical Greece.

Where can I find out more?

Visit the exhibition webpage to find out more and watch video interviews with curator Peter Pormann.

The exhibition examines the first two decades of European printing after Gutenberg’s invention of typography, which eventually revolutionized the world of text production and distribution.

"The outstanding collections at the John Rylands Library include many landmarks in early European printing, part of the Spencer library purchased by Enriqueta Rylands in 1892,” said Julianne Simpson, Special Collections Research Engagement Manager.

"The books on loan include one of the earliest datable examples of printing by Johannes Gutenberg, one of the earliest illustrated editions and the earliest illustrated book printed in Rome. These are all extremely rare treasures and we are pleased to be able to share them with visitors to Princeton for this exhibition."

Princeton University owns one of the world’s great collections of earliest European printing through the work of John and William Scheide. This exhibition has displayed these collections alongside contributions from other American libraries, The John Rylands Library, Cambridge University Library and the Devonshire Collections in Chatsworth House.

"The loans from England in particular include treasures of early printing that have never before been seen in America, and many of the loans from American libraries have never before gone beyond their walls," the exhibition notes.

The contribution from The John Rylands Library, which have all been digitised, are:

Printed Cyprus Indulgence

This 30-line indulgence was printed in 1455 and is the earliest of nine surviving examples which were authorised for the archdiocese of Cologne. It uses the same type as the Gutenberg Bible for the titling and a different text type which was modelled on a gothic hybrid script. An indulgence granted full or partial remission of the punishment of sin.

Vocaularius ex quo

Eltville: Nicolaus Bechtermunze, 5 June 1469

The types used in this book were probably made by Gutenberg after his bankruptcy, when Johann Fust and Peter Schöffer took ownership of his first workshop. As argued in the exhibition Gutenberg continued his experiments to improve the speed and efficiency of printing in Eltville near Mainz.

Vier Historien

Bamberg: Albert Pfister, soon after St. Walpurgis Eve 1462

Vier Historien (Four Histories) is a typographic book illustrated with woodcuts that narrates the Old Testament stories of Joseph, Daniel, Judith and Esther.

Johannes de Turrecremata, Meditatones

Rome: Ulrich Han, 31 December 1467

This series of woodcut scenes were created for Cardinal Juan de Torquemada, head of the Dominican order, to accompany his meditations. It is the first printed literary work of a living author. The Cardinal was one of several grandees of the Roman church who took a personal interest in the 1450s and 60s in the new discovery of typography.

The exhibition runs until December 15. More information can be found on the exhibition website.

The Black Thought & Culture and African Diaspora: 1860-Present databases contain a wealth of unique material ranging from immigration records, civil rights documentation and hard to find material from key African American and African diaspora thinkers. The two databases will be spotlighted as Featured databases on the Library website to coincide with October’s Black History Month.

They are indicative of the Library’s ongoing commitment to diversifying the range of primary resources available to the University. In this particular instance they also form part of our response to a key recommendation in the recent Royal Historical Society’s Report on Race, Ethnicity and Equality: to recognise and address "the imperative need to widen taught History curriculums in schools and universities to challenge the racial foundations of the discipline and to reflect the full diversity of human histories."

Look out too for updates on social media by @uomlibrary and @uomlib_ian on Twitter.

Whilst the space has always housed maps, it is the first time it is being treated as a Special Collections Reading Room, which means staff will be available during the week to help with map enquiries. It also means that the area is reserved for customers consulting maps and special material. To protect the collections, food and drink are not allowed in this area (even bottled water).

The trial service will run from today, 30 September for three months, and will include provision for teaching workshops and other enhanced study for those engaging with our map collections.

Staff will be on hand to help on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays from 9.30am to 12.30pm and 1.30 to 4.30pm. Appointments to view maps must be made in advance.

If you have any questions, feedback on the service, or wish to make an appointment, email: uml.maps@manchester.ac.uk

The new exhibition, in line with the themes of our Peterloo exhibition, is a celebration of revolution and the contribution of individuals whose stories feature within the Special Collections of The John Rylands Library.

The exhibition explores figures such as William Morris, designer and socialist activist and Lydia Becker, an early campaigner for women’s suffrage.

Visit The John Rylands Library now to see the exhibition which runs until Autumn.

Whilst The Rylands Gallery will be closed from Monday, 1 April for the exhibition changeover and improvements, the rest of the building will remain open and the Peterloo exhibition is well worth a visit.

New content will be installed on Monday, 8 and Tuesday, 9 April and the St John Fragment (pictured) will be available again once the Rylands Gallery reopens.

Visit the Rylands Gallery when it reopens on Wednesday, 10 April to experience some of our Special Collections relating to suffrage, abolition and politics.

About the Reading Room

The room, located on the fourth floor of our Deansgate site, is an air conditioned, quiet space where anyone can register to access items from our world class Special Collections.

Improvements to the space

Christie Room interim arrangement

Exact dates for the start and end of the refurbishment will be confirmed in due course.

Whilst the refurbishment is underway, the Reading Room will operate out of the Christie Room - a quiet space in the historic part of The John Rylands Library.

Services and routes throughout the building may alter at various times during the refurbishment.

Please check the Special Collections Reading Room webpages for any updates ahead of your visit.

Further details

If you would like any further details on this work, please contact: 

• Dominic Marsh - Project Co-ordinator

Manchester Histories Festival is back for its third biennial festival, providing you with the opportunity to learn, discover and interpret histories from across the city.

'Great Women of Manchester' Collection encounters will explore the story behind a selection of rare items from The John Rylands Library's women's history collections. A hand-written manuscript from Victorian novelist Elizabeth Gaskell will be displayed, as will a letter from renowned suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst to C.P. Scott, former editor of the Manchester Guardian.

The Guardian Archive will be the focus of our presence at Manchester Histories Festival’s Celebration Day. The archive is one of the Library’s most significant collections, depicting the newspaper’s key place in the city’s rich history of campaigns for social and political reform. Visitors to the stand will be invited to examine the photographs uncovered from this archive in the hope to identify some of the staff, locations, occupations and machinery captured in the images.

Manchester Histories Festival runs from Friday, 3 June to Sunday, 12 June 2016. Collection encounters will take place on 8 and 10 June at The John Rylands Library. Manchester Histories Festival's Celebration Day is on 11 June at Manchester Town Hall, 10am to 4pm. All events are free to attend, just turn up.

Keep an eye on the Library’s Twitter and Facebook accounts for a glimpse into the Guardian Archives and a preview of the Collection encounter items.

The John Rylands Library is part of Manchester Histories Festival’s, Manchester Celebration Day 2016 taking place across Manchester Town Hall and Central Library from 10:30-4pm on Saturday 11 June. Bringing together nearly 100 histories and heritage organisations from across Greater Manchester, the Manchester Celebration Day will have something for all the family, including exhibition stands, games, heritage bus rides, craft activities, film screenings, performances and talks.

The videos can be viewed on YouTube.

The reels of black and white footage capture key moments during Operation Dynamo, the rescue from Dunkirk of over 300,000 British and allied troops trapped by advancing German forces.

The films were shot by Lieutenant Philip Roderick Hall who was serving aboard the destroyer HMS Whitehall, one of hundreds of naval vessels, merchant ships and small boats that took part in the rescue.

The films, which have never been broadcast and have been seen by only a handful of people, were digitised by the North West Film Archive at Manchester Metropolitan University. The films can now be viewed on YouTube, while the original reels have been donated to the Imperial War Museum in London for specialist preservation.

Kay Gladstone, Curator at the Imperial War Museum, said:

Lieutenant Philip Roderick Hall shot the films while he was serving on HMS Whitehall during the evacuation from Dunkirk. There is also footage of him training as a Fleet Air Arm pilot prior to being killed in action on 14 June 1942.

One hair-raising scene shows planes attempting to land on the aircraft carrier HMS Argus during a storm. There are also scenes of Lieutenant Hall relaxing off-duty in England during the summer of 1941.

The two film reels were discovered at the University’s John Rylands Library by a member of the Heald-Hall family whose remarkable archive of correspondence, letter-books and diaries, spanning from 1866 to 1987, is one of hundreds of outstanding collections of rare books, manuscripts, archives, maps and visual materials housed in the Library.

John Hodgson, Manuscripts and Archives Manager, said:

Stills from the videos:

Access the archives.

These archives include: a collection from the British Library with a concentration of titles from the northern half of the country, covering the mid-18th to the mid-20th century; a worldwide audio/visual collection containing rare newsreel footage leading up to and during the Second World War; and two collections of the Washington D.C Bureau of Associated Press which includes reporting on the assassination of John F Kennedy, the Mexican Revolution, the Wall Street Crash and much more.

Whether you're a PhD candidate researching a little-known chapter of Americana for your thesis topic, an Undergraduate writing a dissertation on wartime newsreel propaganda, or just happen to be interested in how people commented and analysed events from local matters to global events, take a look at our newest acquisitions!

An early example of scientific outreach, these ground-breaking 'Penny Lectures' were delivered to packed audiences in Manchester during the 1860s and 1870s. Initiated by noted chemist Henry Roscoe, topics ranged from epidemic delusions to spectrum analysis and the indestructability of matter.

Often quirkily illustrated, the lectures helped to popularise science and raise the profile of Manchester as a hub of scientific and technological progress. They were praised at the time by leading scientific journal Nature for making science accessible to the general public: "Many of the lectures are so fascinating that it is difficult to put the volumes aside….whilst within the comprehension of all classes, they will also be found not unworthy of perusal by men of culture."

Professor Danielle George MBE, Associate Dean of Teaching & Learning at The University of Manchester, said:

Using 21st-century digital technology to open up its archives, The University of Manchester Library is giving a new lease of life to cutting-edge science of the past and inspiring scientists of the future. Science and technology have a huge impact on every aspect of our day to day lives. By shedding light on Manchester’s pioneering contribution to scientific education in the past, the University is highlighting its current international prowess and its pivotal role in years to come.

The lectures can be accessed at www.manchester.ac.uk/library/science-lectures.

The project, which is being funded by the National Cataloguing Grants Programme for Archives, aims to produce a detailed catalogue of Scott’s Editorial Correspondence. This comprises around 13,000 letters exchanged with 1,300 individuals including leading statesmen and politicians such as Herbert Asquith, David Lloyd George, Winston Churchill and Ramsay MacDonald.

Scott was an influential figure in Liberal circles, through a consistent left-of-centre stance in his editorship of the Guardian as well as holding the post of president of the Manchester Liberal Foundation and serving as a Liberal MP for 11 years. His interest in causes such as British policy in South Africa, women’s suffrage, Irish nationalism and the establishment of a Jewish homeland is illuminated in correspondence with figures like suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst, Irish nationalist Sir Roger Casement, and Zionist Chaim Weizmann. Significant literary figures also feature, among them George Bernard Shaw and Arthur Ransome (the newspaper’s Russian correspondent for a time).

Alan Rusbridger, former editor of the Guardian, wrote in his letter of support for the project: 

Fran Baker, who curates the archive, said:

The Guardian Archive was donated to The University of Manchester Library in 1971 and is housed in The John Rylands Library. It dates from the newspaper’s establishment in 1821 to the early 1970s and also includes material relating to the Guardian’s sister newspaper, the Manchester Evening News.

This is the second award the Library has won to enhance the catalogue for the Guardian Archive this year, following success in winning the 2015 Business Archive Council’s cataloguing grant for ‘Behind the headlines: documenting the people in the Guardian Archive’ back in August.

The archive is of huge significance for Manchester. Founded two years after the momentous Peterloo Massacre, the Guardian has a key place in the city’s rich history of radicalism, protest, and campaigns for social and political reform.

The grant will be used to enhance the catalogue of the archive, making it easier to trace individuals connected to the Guardian (formerly the Manchester Guardian) and the Manchester Evening News, largely focusing on records dating from 1880 to the 1940s.

The Guardian Archive was donated to The University of Manchester Library in 1971. It is housed in The John Rylands Library and forms one of our largest collections. It dates from the newspaper’s establishment in 1821 to the early 1970s and also includes material relating to the Guardian’s sister newspaper, the Manchester Evening News.

The collection contains a huge body of editorial correspondence and dispatches as well as a comprehensive set of records relating to the Guardian as a business concern. It is the business records relating to people – from the editors and contributors to the cooks and cleaners – which will form the primary focus of the BAC-funded project.

The project will run for six weeks starting from 28 September.

Building a graphene archive

Professor Sir Kostya Novoselov has donated his analogue archive, comprising ten laboratory notebooks to The University of Manchester Library. These notebooks will form the basis of an ongoing archive which we intend to grow as a major resource for researchers and to preserve the legacy of this ongoing work.

In addition to this archive we will continue to develop our great collection of historical scientific books. In 2014, we purchased Conrad Gessner’s work on fossils, gems and stones. Published in 1565, it includes the earliest reference to the use of graphite for pencils.

Watch an interview John Hodgson, Manuscripts and Archives Manager and Julianne Simpson, Rare Books and Maps Manager on Gessner’s book:

Conservation

We are working with academics and students from a number of departments across the University to explore the potential uses of graphene in conservation.

Two postgraduate research students have recently undertaken laboratory testing of various properties of graphene in this context; such as its ability to act as a moisture/gas barrier, its UV-screening capabilities, and its anti-static properties.

Disseminating graphene research

Manchester eScholar offers a set of services to store, manage, and disseminate scholarly work on the web.

The Library has partnered with the National Graphene Institute to develop an eScholar feed that automatically populates and updates graphene publication lists on an hourly basis.

This work both significantly benefits the graphene research community at The University of Manchester through rapid dissemination of its work and provides the international graphene community with instant access to the latest ground-breaking research in this field.

View the latest list of publications on the National Graphene Institute website.