John Hodgson on running one of the world's great libraries

The John Rylands Research Institute and Library is one of the great libraries of the world: a research powerhouse and a major cultural institution. It’s housed in a magnificent, purpose-built ‘book cathedral’ in Manchester, England. John Hodgson is Associate Director Curatorial Practices at the University of Manchester. In his role at Rylands, John “leads a team of librarians, archivists, curators, conservators, imaging specialists, and experts in public and academic engagement.”

We met in his office to talk about, among other things, the history of this great Library and his role as one of its leaders; about its collections; about slavery, pop music and Bibles; about marginalia and provenance and humanitarian agencies; about equal access and Zoom consultations; Elizabeth Gaskell, Enriqueta Rylands and Queen Victoria; the Huntington Library; gatekeepers; the difficulty of preserving correspondence over social media; Ian Curtis lyrics; the Napoleonic Wars; diversity, and the responsibility of judging what parts of “history” are worth preserving.