John Rylands University Library
Encyclopedia
The John Rylands University Library (The JRUL) is the University of Manchester
University of Manchester
The University of Manchester is a public research university located in Manchester, United Kingdom. It is a "red brick" university and a member of the Russell Group of research-intensive British universities and the N8 Group...

's library and information service. It was formed in July 1972 from the merger of the library of the Victoria University of Manchester
Victoria University of Manchester
The Victoria University of Manchester was a university in Manchester, England. On 1 October 2004 it merged with the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology to form a new entity, "The University of Manchester".-1851 - 1951:The University was founded in 1851 as Owens College,...

 with the John Rylands Library
John Rylands Library
The John Rylands Library is a Victorian Gothic building on Deansgate in Manchester, England. The library, which opened to the public in 1900, was founded by Mrs Enriqueta Augustina Rylands in memory of her late husband, John Rylands...

. On 1 October 2004 it joined the library of the University of Manchester Institute of Science & Technology (UMIST) on the merger of the two universities.

The main library is on the Oxford Road Campus of the University in Chorlton on Medlock: the postal address is Oxford Road, Manchester, M13 9PP, UK, though the library entrance is at Burlington Street. The forms of the library's official name have varied slightly over the period of its existence: once as "John Rylands University Library of Manchester". The Library is a National Research Library (an award of the Higher Education Funding Council for England
Higher Education Funding Council for England
The Higher Education Funding Council for England is a non-departmental public body of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills in the United Kingdom, which has been responsible for the distribution of funding to Universities and Colleges of Higher and Further Education in England since...

): the only one in the north of England.

Contents

It is the largest non-legal deposit
Legal deposit
Legal deposit is a legal requirement that a person or group submit copies of their publications to a repository, usually a library. The requirement is mostly limited to books and periodicals. The number of copies varies and can range from one to 19 . Typically, the national library is one of the...

 academic library in the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

, has the largest collection of electronic resources of any library in the UK and supports all subject areas taught by the University. The JRUL provides its members with a plethora of services and resources, including an extensive range of electronic resources. A limited range of services is also provided for members of the public, schools and commercial companies.

Library buildings

The main building is located at Burlington Street, west of Oxford Road: (building no. 55 on the University's Campus Guide): the oldest part of this is the east wing of 1936: it was extended by south and west wings in 1953-56 and by the Muriel Stott hall in 1978. Until 1965 it was known as the Arts Library as the Christie Building contained the scientific section of the library and the Medical Library was also in a separate building until 1981. The larger part to the north opened in 1981 (architects: Dane, Scherrer & Hicks): it had been designed in 1972 as the first instalment of a larger building. The John Rylands University Library has a number of satellite libraries in other University buildings, including the Eddie Davies Library (Manchester Business School
Manchester Business School
Manchester Business School is the largest department of the University of Manchester in Manchester, England. According to Bloomberg Business Week's ranking of the world's best business schools the MBS MBA is ranked third in the world...

) and the Joule Library (Sackville Street Building).

Notable collections housed in the Main Library are the Guardian Archives, the Manchester Collection (on local medical history), maps and plans, and the Christian Brethren Archive
Plymouth Brethren
The Plymouth Brethren is a conservative, Evangelical Christian movement, whose history can be traced to Dublin, Ireland, in the late 1820s. Although the group is notable for not taking any official "church name" to itself, and not having an official clergy or liturgy, the title "The Brethren," is...

. Also within the Main Library are the offices of the Manchester Medical Society which has had accommodation within the University since 1874.

Partial Main Library refurbishment

In summer 2009 to January 2010 part of the ground floor of the Main Library was refurbished, with further changes elsewhere in the organization of the library services.

Prehistory

The library includes collections which had already been brought together before Owens College was opened on 12 March 1851. These are the library of the Manchester Medical Society, established in 1834; the library of the Manchester Mechanics' Institute, established in 1824 (very few items remain in the present collections); the library of the Manchester Infirmary
Manchester Royal Infirmary
The Manchester Royal Infirmary is a hospital in Manchester, England which was founded by Charles White in 1752 as a cottage hospital capable of caring for twelve patients. Manchester Royal Infirmary is part of a larger NHS Trust incorporating several hospitals called Central Manchester University...

, (from the 1750s to the late 19th century); and the Radford Library from St Mary's Hospital, Manchester
St Mary's Hospital, Manchester
St Mary's Hospital is a hospital in Manchester, England. It is part of Central Manchester University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. It was founded in 1790. St Mary's provides a unique range of inter-related services specifically for women and children...

 (early obstetrical and gynaecological literature collected by the surgeon Thomas Radford). (The two latter collections were donated to the Medical Library in 1917 and 1927 respectively.)

1851–1936

Owens College was founded in 1851 and the college library began with donations from James Heywood (1,200 volumes) and Dr William Charles Henry in the first year. The first large addition to stock was the library of James Prince Lee
James Prince Lee
James Prince Lee, MA, DD was an English clergyman who became the first Bishop of Manchester.-Early life:...

, bishop of Manchester, first 7,000 volumes in 1869 and then a further instalment. The collection was rich in theology, church history and fine art. Over the next thirty years many significant additions were made such as the substantial personal libraries of E. A. Freeman (6,000 volumes) and Robert Angus Smith
Robert Angus Smith
Robert Angus Smith was a Scottish chemist, who investigated numerous environmental issues. He is famous for his research on air pollution in 1852, in the course of which he discovered what came to be known as acid rain...

 (4,000 volumes). In 1904 the Owens College Library became the Manchester University Library on the merger of the college with the Victoria University of Manchester. The library was located in three different positions during the early years: Cobden's House, Quay Street; the John Owens Building, 1873–1898; the Christie Building from autumn 1898. From 1903 the Librarian (Charles Leigh) improved the administration of the library by introducing the Dewey Decimal Classification and higher cataloguing standards. On the death of Richard Copley Christie the library received his fine personal library of over 8,000 volumes including many rare books from the Renaissance period. In 1936 the library was divided into two parts on the opening of the new Arts Library, Lime Grove. Thereafter the Christie Building would contain only scientific and technical literature. The Medical School of the University had its own library which had been founded in 1834 as the library of the Manchester Medical Society. This was accommodated in Owens College once the Medical School
Manchester Medical School
The School of Medicine at the University of Manchester is one of the largest in the UK with around undergraduates, 1400 postgraduates and staff. The school is divided into five separate divisions, also called schools, one of which, Manchester Medical School is responsible for medical...

 was established there in 1874 and on its centenary in 1934 was enriched by the Manchester Collection of Dr E. Bosdin Leech relating to the medical history of the Manchester district. From 1919 a Deaf Education collection was established: this was significantly enlarged by Abraham Farrar's bequest.

Moses Tyson

For the first thirty years of this period the librarian was Dr Moses Tyson (1897–1969) who has previously been keeper of western manuscripts at the John Rylands Library. He was an historian and the first Librarian to be a member of the University Senate. The building of a new Arts Library meant that the stock had to be divided into two groups of subjects: arts and social sciences, and science and technology. The latter subjects remained in the original Christie Library though in areas of overlap there was some duplicating of entries in the library catalogues to assist the readers. By the early 1950s the stock had grown to such a size that the arts library building needed to be extended. This had been foreseen by the architects and once funds were available the building of two new wings in a similar style was undertaken between 1953 and 1957 (however the pattern of reading and stack rooms in the three wings is not the same). Features such as an exhibition hall and a department of special collections were included in the design together with improvements in the administrative accommodation. New departments had been established in the university by this time and these meant that the library extended its coverage in areas such as American studies, history of art, music and Near Eastern studies.

Frederick Ratcliffe to William Simpson

After Dr Tyson's retirement in 1965 Dr F. W. Ratcliffe was appointed librarian and a period of further expansion followed which included an ambitious acquisitions policy, the beginnings of library computerisation and better liaison with the academic departments. He had a major role, with Sir William Mansfield Cooper, the vice-chancellor, in the successful merger of the John Rylands Library with the Manchester University Library on 19 July 1972. An additional extension was planned about this time though not built until eight years later as funding was not then available. The extension was planned as a rectangular block, in two unequal parts (the second part has never been built). Before the extension could be built congestion in the library building had to be alleviated by moving some stock to other locations on the campus. The benefaction of Miss Muriel Stott, an honorary governor of the John Rylands Library, enabled the building of a tent-like octagonal hall next to the library, the Muriel Stott Conference Centre (on the building of the extension this was enclosed by the rest of the library). The design of the extension was modified when actually implemented in 1979 so that a link section united it with the three-wing existing library building. This new extension opened in the autumn term of 1981 and at the same time the medical and science (Christie) libraries were vacated so that a more coherent organization of stock became possible. By the time this building opened Dr Ratcliffe had left to be the University Librarian at Cambridge
Cambridge University Library
The Cambridge University Library is the centrally-administered library of Cambridge University in England. It comprises five separate libraries:* the University Library main building * the Medical Library...

. He was succeeded in 1981 by Dr Michael Pegg, formerly Librarian of the University of Birmingham, who remained until he resigned on grounds of ill health in 1991. He was followed by Christopher J. Hunt, formerly Social Sciences sub-librarian and later university librarian of James Cook University, Townsville and of Latrobe University, both in Australia and, after returning to the UK, librarian of the British Library of Political and Economic Science
British Library of Political and Economic Science
The British Library of Political and Economic Science is the main library of theLondon School of Economics and Political Science, and the world's largest political and social sciences library .-Description:...

, London. On Mr Hunt's retirement the new librarian was the librarian of Trinity College, Dublin
Trinity College, Dublin
Trinity College, Dublin , formally known as the College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity of Queen Elizabeth near Dublin, was founded in 1592 by letters patent from Queen Elizabeth I as the "mother of a university", Extracts from Letters Patent of Elizabeth I, 1592: "...we...found and...

, William G. Simpson, who had also previously been Acting Deputy Librarian of JRULM until 1985 and subsequently university librarian of the Universities of London and Surrey. Mr Simpson remained until his retirement in December 2007. During the period 2004-7 a major refurbishment of the historic John Rylands Library in the centre of Manchester, together with the construction of an acclaimed new visitor centre, was completed, whilst the Library as a whole merged with the libraries of UMIST and the Manchester Business School to create the John Rylands University Library, University of Manchester.

Former Librarians

Notable librarians of the library before 1972 were Charles W. E. Leigh
Charles Leigh (librarian)
Charles William Edward Leigh was an English academic librarian. From 1895 to 1903 he was successively on the staff of the British Museum and librarian of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society. In 1903 he was appointed librarian of the library of Manchester University and held the post...

 (1903–1935), Moses Tyson
Moses Tyson
Moses Tyson , historian and librarian, was keeper of western manuscripts at the John Rylands Library 1927-1935 and from 1935 to 1965 librarian of the Manchester University Library...

 (1935–1965) and Frederick William Ratcliffe
Frederick William Ratcliffe
Frederick William Ratcliffe is an English philologist and librarian. He has a Ph.D. in German, given for his thesis on Heinrich von Mügeln at the University of Manchester. From 1954 he was an assistant librarian or sublibrarian in the universities of Manchester, Glasgow, and Newcastle upon Tyne...

 (formerly assistant librarian, librarian 1965–1980) whose years of service amount to a total of 78 years. George Wilson was librarian of the Medical Library for over 50 years.

Further reading

  • Pullan, Brian & Abendstern, Michele (2000) A History of the University of Manchester, 1951-73. Manchester University Press ISBN 0-7190-5670-5 Extract about Moses Tyson
  • Ratcliffe, F. W. (2007) Books, Books, Just Miles and Miles of Books: across the library counter, 1950–2000. Cambridge: F. W. Ratcliffe (unpublished autobiography held at Cambridge University Library)
  • Rigg, J. Anthony (1968) "A comparative history of the libraries of Manchester and Liverpool
    University of Liverpool
    The University of Liverpool is a teaching and research university in the city of Liverpool, England. It is a member of the Russell Group of large research-intensive universities and the N8 Group for research collaboration. Founded in 1881 , it is also one of the six original "red brick" civic...

     Universities up to 1903", in: Saunders, W. L., ed. University and Research Library Studies: some contributions from the University of Sheffield Post-graduate School of Librarianship and Information Science. Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1968
  • Taylor, Frank (1982) The John Rylands University Library of Manchester. [28] p. Manchester: John Rylands University Library of Manchester (compiled after the opening of the 1981 extension to the Main Library)
  • Tyson, Moses (1937) The Manchester University Library. Manchester: U. P. (published on the occasion of the opening of the Arts Library, which was in use from 1936: architects Thomas Worthington
    Thomas Worthington (architect)
    Thomas Worthington was a 19th-century English architect, particularly associated with public buildings in and around Manchester.-Early life:...

    & Sons)

External links

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