Opening the Collections: case studies from the University of Manchester Library

Jane Gallagher (Head of Digital Special Collections) will discuss the University of Manchester Library’s experiences of making cultural heritage collections open for scholarship, with the challenges and opportunities which this brings. Working with heritage collections in digital form, we often balance between preservation and access, user demand and service capabilities, Open aspirations and guarded instincts. Considering our audiences, our tools and standards, the potential for collaboration and the opportunities for confronting historical biases, Jane will share the Library’s different approaches to providing and using cultural heritage collections for open scholarship, and consider future possibilities from the explosion of access to AI tools.