Open Principles and Equality
Open Knowledge in Higher Education
In the 2022/23 academic year, the Open Knowledge in Higher Education unit of the PGCert in Higher Education welcomed 24 learners including postgraduate researchers, academic, and Professional Services staff at the University.
The breadth of experience and background of our learners allows for spirited discussion of the role of openness across teaching, research and professional practice. It also provides a unique opportunity for staff from across the University to engage in critical analysis and professional development. In this academic year, we further developed our content around licensing and sharing educational resources.
The unit will continue to develop in 2023/24 through its inclusion in the new MA Library and Archive Studies.
Access, Success and Social Responsibility
Social responsibility is at the core of the University’s three strategic goals and the Library remains committed to ensuring our teaching, spaces and collections are accessible to students, educators and the wider public.
Over 1,000 memberships were made available through our widening access schemes. These include school leavers who form a large part of our community engagement with schools and colleges across the region.
The Library plays a significant role across the Access Manchester schemes including the flagship Manchester Access Programme, Manchester Distance Access Scheme and Gateways. These are targeted projects ensuring equity of access to higher education for 11–18-year-olds from disadvantaged backgrounds.
To support students transitioning to life at University, the Library developed a pre-arrival resource circulated to all offer holders, which reflects the breadth of the student experience. Now in its second iteration, the resource proves incredibly valuable with over 10,000 users and nearly 55,000 uses of its to-do list feature to support students during their unique journey.
Watch the Student Team's Welcome video in full below
Figshare Fest 2023
In May, the Library and Figshare hosted Figshare Fest 2023 at the Manchester Museum. Figshare is a repository where users can make all of their research outputs available in a citable, shareable and discoverable manner.
The event comprised of presentations about Figshare's services and updates, and user-led experiences from the Figshare community, which included Library staff. The fully-booked event was attended by 100 delegates from Figshare's global user base. Speakers included The Francis Crick Institute, The British Museum, Open University and colleagues from The University of Manchester.
Harvesting research data records
The Library has developed a process to automatically harvest research data records from the Figshare Research Data Repository system into Primo, ensuring they are made discoverable via Library Search.
A second phase of this work will investigate the feasibility of linking the records in Library Search to other related research, which will enhance the search and discovery experience.
Rights Retention in collaboration with N8
The University worked collectively with the N8 Research Partnership to develop a new N8 Rights Retention Statement. This new statement supports our researchers to retain more intellectual property rights for their published articles through a revised publications policy.
Rights Retention ensures that all University-authored articles are immediately available for all interested readers to access, extending the potential reach and impact of research.
Office for Open Research Digest
Office for Open Research (OOR) has continued publishing the Open Research Digest, sharing links and ideas from the world of open research to the University community and beyond. The digest has reached a global audience, with readers as far afield as Australia and Singapore.
This year we published a wide range of opinion pieces from members of OOR staff and the University’s research community. This included the discussion of Responsible Metrics, Data Stewardship, and the funder policies driving open research.
CrimRxiv
The Library, through collaboration with the University's Criminology department, has taken on ownership of CrimRxiv, an open access and preprint repository for criminology and criminal justice publications. We also partnered with PubPub, the non-profit platform powering CrimRxiv. These actions form part of our ongoing support for community-driven and non-profit initiatives that contribute to a diverse and equitable academic landscape.
CrimRxiv has already made significant impact, sharing over 2,000 open access publications to a global audience.
LGBTQ+ Collection
Queering the Collections is an initiative intended to foreground and develop collections and items of particular relevance for LGBTQ+ history.
We launched the LGBTQ+ Collections subject guide, which is at the core of the Library’s Queer Advisory Group initiative to highlight people, groups and stories already present (but often hidden) in our collections. Alongside this approach, the group also intends to develop the collections better to reflect the experiences of queer people.
Frances Power Cobbe, 1894
Frances Power Cobbe, 1894
Jisc JSTOR Open Collections Platform
We now have four open access collections available on The University of Manchester Jisc JSTOR Open Collections Platform with the recent inclusion of our Iranian Newspapers collection.
This innovative platform enables us to share our collections with a wider audience. It offers viewing statistics, enabling us to offer feedback and contribute to the enhancement of new analytic perspectives and techniques.
Sikh Heritage Community Project
The RACE Centre took some significant steps to deepen our relationships with the local Sikh communities.
The Library holds an important manuscript copy of the Sri Guru Granth Sahib, the holy book of Sikhism, which is dated to the 17th century. This manuscript bears witness to British imperialism and militarism: it was ‘wrested from the arms of a Sikh priest’ by a British officer during the Battle of Gujarat in 1849, and it later passed into the manuscript collections of the earls of Crawford. For many years it was in a very fragile condition, and requests to view or study it were routinely declined.
Following conservation and digitisation of the Sri Guru Granth Sahib – carried out in consultation with the local Sikh community and conservator Jasdip Singh Dillon – we are forging closer relationships with the local faith communities. These relationships allow us to share the manuscript with them and to deepen our knowledge and appreciation of it.
The RACE Centre organised several community events at the Rylands, featuring acts of worship and veneration, talks, music, and food and drink. In June 2023, the Sri Guru Gobind Singh Gurdwara in Whalley Range hosted a community digitisation event, in which members of the community brought family photographs and documents to be photographed and catalogued by Library staff. In August 2023 we were honoured to host a visit by Singh Sahib Gyani Baljit Singh, head Granthi (priest) of the Golden Temple in Amritsar, who recited passages from the Sri Guru Granth Sahib and discussed its significance with other Granthi. We are continuing to work with the community to develop these initiatives further.
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