MANCHESTER UNIVERSITY, THE JOHN RYLANDS LIBRARY

Years ago I visited the University Manchester, when the city still showed the marks of World War II. I did not see the John Rylands University Library. so I am grateful to John Gehl for forwarding this account by William G. Simpson, the Library's Director: As befits the birthplace of the industrial revolution and the great "Cottonopolis" of the nineteenth century, Manchester's University Library is named after the city's greatest mill owner and cotton merchant, who at one time employed 24,000 people in the city. The original John Rylands Library was built and endowed in his memory by his wife, Enriqueta Augustina, whose partly Cuban origins give us our own connection with the Americas. The present Library was formed by the amalgamation, in 1972, of the Rylands which, despite its medieval Gothic appearance, which leads some visitors to mistake it for a cathedral, opened as recently as 1900, with the original Manchester University Library, which was founded with the University itself in 1851. The historic John Rylands building in the city centre houses the Special Collections Division of the JRULM.

And what Special Collections they are! Amongst our printed materials we have the earliest example of European printing, the St Christopher woodcut of 1423, and over 4,500 incunabula, including both versions of the Gutenberg Bible and sixty Caxtons (only the British Library has more, but our copies are generally agreed to be finer!). We also have an almost complete collection of the works published by Aldus Manutius and individual treasures include the Prayer Book of Mary Queen of Scots. Our manuscript holdings include the earliest surviving portion of the New Testament, the St John Fragment, dating from about 125AD, and range through superb western and oriental mediaeval manuscripts to modern literary and other archives, whose content ranges from manorial rolls to radio-astronomy.

I wouldn't, though, want to give readers the impression that we are only concerned with historic resources. Our modern printed collections are only exceeded in scale among UK university libraries by those of Oxford and Cambridge and they have had both a 500 year start on us and the advantage of legal deposit. Our electronic resources exceed even theirs! But it's also all-change. The foundation of a new University of Manchester from the existing Victoria University of Manchester and UMIST on 1 October this year means that we are currently merging two library services to create an even greater and, we intend, better Library.