Why this matters
The University of Manchester Library stands at a moment of profound possibility.
We are Britain's third-largest academic library system and one of the acknowledged great libraries of the world. We support almost 50,000 students and thousands of researchers in the UK's largest single-site university.
During this strategy, our University will reach 100,000 students on campus and online. Our civic reach extends across Greater Manchester and beyond. Our national influence shapes how research libraries think about the student experience, research environments, special collections, open access, digital transformation, public discourse, scientific discovery and cultural inheritance.
But scale and reputation are not strategy. They are the foundation we build from, not the future we build toward. The world has changed more in the past five years than in the previous twenty. The digital transformation we thought we had mastered revealed itself to be merely the beginning. Artificial Intelligence has moved from experimental tool to essential infrastructure.
Geopolitical uncertainty shapes everything from our collecting practices to our data sovereignty. The relationship between universities and their cities, between research and impact, between knowledge and social mobility, all of this is being fundamentally renegotiated.
And into this transformed landscape comes Manchester 2035, the University's new strategic framework. It doesn't ask the Library to support the University's ambitions. It demands that we collaborate, then create and deliver them.
In 2020 we published Imagine2030. We took a step aside to reflect; to think about the future and decided we needed its next iteration.
This is why Imagine2035 matters. This document answers the question: how does Britain's third-largest academic library system, and one of its most innovative, become the engine of transformation that Manchester 2035 requires? This is why, by engaging with hundreds of our University Library staff and by listening to colleagues across the University and beyond, we have written Imagine2035.