University of Manchester Library Mr Simpson had previously been Acting Deputy Librarian of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester 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 2004-07 a major refurbishment of the historic John Rylands Library in the centre of Manchester, together with the construction of 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. Following Mr Simpson's retirement in 2007, Jan
Rylands Library Papyrus P52 formula_1, nevertheless continued to maintain that "The Rylands papyrus may therefore be accepted as of the first half of the second century". An altogether different approach to dating New Testament payri has been proposed by a number of paleographers in recent years, drawing on the notion of "graphic stream" developed by Guglielmo Cavallo. Rather than comparing letter forms of undated papyri directly with dated comparators, it is proposed that the hand in question should first be identified to a graphic stream representing the overall development of a particular handwriting style. "The way that individual letters are formed within these graphic