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
Rylands v Fletcher tort, but instead a sub-tort of nuisance. In 1860, Rylands paid contractors to build a reservoir on his land, intending that it should supply the Ainsworth Mill with water. Rylands played no active role in the construction, instead contracting out to a competent engineer. While building it, the contractors discovered a series of old coal shafts and passages under the land filled loosely with soil and debris, which joined up with Thomas Fletcher's adjoining mine. Rather than blocking these shafts up, the contractors left them. On 11 December 1860, shortly after being filled for the first time, Rylands' reservoir burst