Manchester Digital Collections

The University has made a major investment in the research infrastructure for digital humanities and digital cultural heritage, the Manchester Digital Collections, developed and built in collaboration with experts from Cambridge University Library’s Digital Library team.

The Manchester Digital Collections (MDC) provides enhanced viewing and manipulation of ultra-high quality images, with a parallel display of text, audio, and even video content. With its functionality permitting the presentation of extensive research content alongside the images, the new viewer allows academics to curate digital editions of important items from the collections, contextualising them and bringing their research on the collections to a wider audience.

MDC is supported by the Creative Manchester initiative, and the University’s Research Lifecycle Programme, which is a five-year programme of investments to support the University in meeting its goal of being one of the top 25 research universities in the world, through a series of strategic investments in IT and associated change.

At the end of 2020 the MDC will hold approaching 30 collections primarily from the University’s Special Collections but also initial submissions from the Manchester Museum and the Whitworth Gallery.
During 2021 new functionality developed at Manchester and Cambridge will further enhance the software, enabling multiple transcriptions and simplifying the process for adding new collections, which we hope will lead to an explosion of content over the next few years.
Find out more:

• Manchester Digital Collections
• Digital Humanities at Manchester
• Cambridge University Library’s Digital Library
• The University of Manchester Library Special Collections