John Rylands Library Rylands Research Institute was relaunched in 2014 as a collaboration between the University of Manchester's Faculty of Humanities and the John Rylands Library. The mission of the Institute is to open up the Library's Special Collections to innovative and multidisciplinary research, in partnership with researchers in Manchester and across the globe. In September 2016, Hannah Barker, Professor of British History, took up the role as Director of the John Rylands Research Institute She succeeded Prof. Peter Pormann who had been appointed Director of the John Rylands Research Institute in 2013. Mrs Rylands established a board of trustees to hold the
John Rylands Library prevent the air being 'fouled by the opening of the outer doors' with internal swing doors between the circulation areas and the main library to 'preserve the valuable books from injury'. By 1900 the ventilation system had evolved to include electric fans to draw in air at pavement level through coke screens sprayed with water. On opening in 1900, the library had 70,000 books and fewer than 100 manuscripts and by 2012, more than 250,000 printed volumes and over one million manuscripts and archival items. The main foundation of the library's collections acquired in 1892 was the "Althorp Library" of