John Rylands Library Manchester University Library. Stella Butler, a medical historian, was Head of Special Collections from 2000 until 2009, and she moved to the University of Leeds in 2011 as University Librarian. Since 2009, Rachel Beckett has been Head of Special Collections and she was appointed as the Associate Director of The John Rylands Library in 2013. Jan Wilkinson has been the Director of The John Rylands Library, as well as University Librarian, since 2008. Acting Librarian David Miller founded the John Rylands Research Institute in 1987, to promote, fund and stimulate research on the primary material held at Deansgate. The John
John Rylands other benefactions he established and maintained orphanages, homes for aged gentlewomen, a home of rest for ministers of slender means, and he provided a town hall, public baths, library and a coffeehouse in the town of Stretford, where he lived. He also built an institute for the benefit of the villagers of Havenstreet on the Isle of Wight, where Rylands passed some of his later years from 1882, having built a house named Longford there after his mainland estate. His donations to the poor of Rome were so generous as to induce the king to decorate him in 1880 with