Open Principles and Equality
Widening Participation
In 2020/21 the Library’s training and skills programmes saw a significant rise in engagement from widening participation students.
We continued to provide academic support for the University’s Manchester Access Programme and the Manchester Distance Access Scheme and, despite the limitations on physical access due to the pandemic, college students were still able to use Library eResources as part of our widening participation membership schemes.
In Semester 1 £35,000 was successfully sourced from the Emergency Hardship Fund to launch the Library Peer Network (LPN). Led by the Library Student Team and recent graduates, the LPN supports current students from widening participation backgrounds to create a network of their peers to explore academic, wellbeing and employability resources and events.
LPN supports the ethos that students at Manchester “work better, together” and uses Microsoft Teams to create a safe environment for networking. It is supported by 139 open access blog posts and 19 podcasts, videos and interviews which on average are viewed over 1,000 times a month. The pilot of LPN was shortlisted for a University of Manchester Making a Difference Award and recognised nationally at the Pearson HE Innovate awards.
Interdisciplinary collaboration saw the Library connect widening participation students to the Library’s collections, modern and historic, through the University’s Initial Teacher Training programmes where we provided support for innovative undergraduate and postgraduate models. We are also contributing to the Manchester 10/10 programme which offers bespoke academic and career support for students, along with a range of networking opportunities.
PGCert HE: Open Knowledge in Higher Education
We delivered our PGCertHE unit, Open Knowledge in Higher Education (OKHE), fully online for the first time this year, to 15 assessed participants. The unit has always taken a flipped blended approach with a strong focus on online materials, the bulk of which are published openly by participants. Moving on-campus sessions to Zoom was a success, and we had good attendance and feedback. This year, Library staff featured as participants, guest speakers, and authors of reading list materials.
The course materials form part of a Medium publication which is open to all, and can be used to learn more about openness in education, or as the basis for teaching a similar unit elsewhere. The publication has over 200 posts and serves as a living archive of perspectives on openness from staff working in Higher Education.
Beyond delivering our unit, we played an active role in the wider PGCertHE programme. We hosted an activity for all PGCertHE participants at the programme Welcome event (via Zoom for the first time), moderated other programme units to help ensure quality, and shared some of our approaches with the rest of the group. Feedback from the external examiner made positive reference to our unit.
Manchester Digital Exhibitions
Manchester Digital Exhibitions (MDE) was developed during 2020/21 to extend the reach and increase the longevity of the Rylands’ physical exhibition programme and as a tool for researchers to create online only exhibitions to share their research with public audiences. MDE is a collaboration between the Library and Research IT, with exhibitions built using Omeka S which allows us to draw high quality images directly from Manchester Digital Collections and LUNA using its IIIF capabilities.
We successfully established an infrastructure including live, test and development servers and launched our Manchester’s Guardian exhibition to coincide with the Guardian’s 200th anniversary on 5 May 2021, and the physical exhibition.
We are actively developing MDE and in 2021/22 will be investigating:
- Bulk imports and exports
- Use of geo-referenced maps
- Use of audio/video content
- Multi-language site development
- Embedding IIIF images
- Use of the Omeka S API
- Innovative ways to share research through MDE
- Developing approaches which cannot be replicated in physical exhibitions
Ahmed Iqbal Ullah RACE (Race Archives and Community Engagement) Centre
The Ahmed Iqbal Ullah Education Trust was successful in being awarded £249,000 from the National Lottery Heritage Fund to continue into the third phase of the ‘Coming in from the Cold’ (CIFTC) project which enables Black, Asian and Global Majority history, heritage and culture to be more visible and accessible. The CIFTC project is supported by the Ahmed Iqbal Ullah RACE Centre and will focus on ensuring that the ethical framework that has been developed for how to work with global majority community groups is shared across the sector. There is also funding to develop collections based educational resources and to undertake a research project to understand the needs of the heritage sector in relation to delivering on their equality, diversity and inclusion commitments.
The Trust was also awarded £49,000 of funding by the Resourcing Racial Justice fund in October 2020 to support the delivery of the Covid 19 collecting project #allstoriesareimportant that was launched in summer 2020 in acknowledgement of the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on Global Majority communities and the lower engagement of these communities with collecting institutions. The fund is aimed at outreach and engagement activities to enable a more nuanced and community narrative led collection to be eventually deposited at the Ahmed Iqbal Ullah RACE Centre.
Equality, Diversity and Inclusion
We are supporting the University’s interim Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Strategy ‘Building an Inclusive University’ to embed EDI as a responsibility for every member of Library staff. Our EDI Working Group, comprising colleagues at senior and operational levels across the Library, will collaborate to support projects, influence activity within their Directorate and provide critical feedback on EDI activity. Our new EDI community of practice will enable all Library colleagues to contribute, learn and share information about EDI activity across the Library. In line with the University’s strategy, the initial areas of the EDI Working Group’s activity will focus on Race and Disability, while recognising that the EDI agenda must support equality, diversity and inclusion for all, irrespective of which protected group they define themselves as a part of. With the necessary support and structures in place we are confident we can achieve measurable outcomes during the lifetime of the interim strategy.
Built with Shorthand