Announcing a New Partnership The University of Manchester Library and The Dr Williams’s Library
27/10/2024
We are truly excited and honoured to announce a new partnership between the Dr Williams’s Library, previously based in London and The John Rylands Library at The University of Manchester, one of the acknowledged great libraries of the world. The new partnership will bring together inarguably the two finest collections of non-conformist religious social history in the world and situate them in Manchester, itself a renowned city of dissent and innovation.
The new partnership draws upon the almost unlimited scholarly synergies between our existing collections, expertise in the management of special collections, powerful traditions of nonconformity, and a proven track record of impact and public engagement. Following a prolonged period of consideration and with the advice and input of many scholars and researchers, the Dr Williams’s Trust was unanimous in its decision to select The John Rylands Library at The University of Manchester as the institution best placed to fulfil the Trust’s ambition for the future.
The University of Manchester’s Professor Christopher Pressler, University Librarian and Director of The John Rylands Library said; ‘There will be major benefits to researchers from the co-location of two internationally significant nonconformist collections. Dr Williams Library collections and staff, funded by the Dr Williams’s Trust, will be embedded in, and benefit from, one of the largest and most respected teams of Special Collections curators, researchers and other specialists in the world, currently comprising over 120 staff. The Dr Williams Library will now work alongside one of the great libraries of the world and in one of the most iconic buildings in Britain.’
Echoing these sentiments the Chair of the Dr Williams’s Trust, Derek McAuley, emphasised how the Trust’s wish to have the legacy of British Protestant Dissent researched and celebrated would be well serviced in Manchester; ‘Manchester has been closely associated with nonconformity since the seventeenth century, in direct resonance with the Dr Williams Library’s own history. Indeed, the origins of both The John Rylands Library and The University of Manchester are rooted in Manchester’s radical, dissenting tradition. The city was at the heart of the dissenting tradition and Unitarianism in particular.’ Mr McAuley observed that ‘the Trust’s collections would enhance holdings already at The John Rylands Library, notably the collection of Unitarian College, Manchester.’
Religion and theology have been a strength of Manchester’s special collections since the opening of The John Rylands Library in 1900. All the world’s major religions are well represented in the collections. The printed, manuscript and archival holdings relating to Christian theology and ecclesiastical history are exceptionally strong, spanning the entire history of Christianity from antiquity through to contemporary evangelicalism, and documenting its many strands, including the Armenian, Syriac and Ethiopic churches, as well Roman Catholicism and Protestant nonconformity.
Looking to the future the Dr Williams’s Trust will continue to financially support the development and management of its richly varied collections of books, manuscripts and art works. It will promote an awareness of the legacy and ongoing contribution of dissent to the wider public across Great Britain and beyond and will actively promote scholars and researchers in the use of the collections.
The John Rylands Library is one of the world’s leading centres for the study of Protestant nonconformity, as befits an institution founded by the Congregationalist Enriqueta Rylands. The Library is home to the internationally renowned Methodist Archives and Research Centre and there are major holdings of printed and archival materials relating to the Unitarian, Baptist, Moravian, Brethren and Congregationalist denominations, which ideally complement the strengths of Dr Williams’s Library.
Bringing together the Dr Williams Library with the collections of The University of Manchester Library has now created the world’s most significant scholarly resource for the history of non-conformist traditions, comprising more than half a million printed volumes and manuscripts.
EVENTS
NEWS
9:50am, 11/12/23
The 2023 Friends of Dr William’s Library Annual Lecture ‘The “Moderate” Puritanism of Samuel Ward of Ipswich’ Thiis well-attended annual lecture took place in association with the Religious History of Britain 1500-1800 Seminar Series and took place at Senate House, University of London. https://www.history. read more …
12:04pm, 15/11/22
Dr Williams’s Trust & Library, London Assoc. Professor Derval Conroy (University College Dublin: School of Languages, Culture and Linguistics) Changing places: paratexts and gender in translations of Le Moyne's “La Gallerie de Femmes Fortes” (1647) Mary Queen of Scots from Mary Queen of Scots from Pierre Le Moyne, La Gallerie des Femmes Fortes (Paris, 1647), 136. DATE: Wednesday 7th December 2022 TIME: 5. read more …
