We are pleased to announce that the Portico Library, Manchester, has been awarded £96,173 from The National Lottery Heritage Fund for its innovative People, Purpose, and Place in Historic Books project. Made possible by National Lottery players, the project will develop a new people-centred collections and cataloguing strategy that will expand our searchable records, making books easier to find through inclusive terminology and historical context.

This grant will enable the Portico to establish new cataloguing procedures that are more sensitive to the complexities around gender, race, and class in the Library’s collection, making it easier for everyone to use, locate, and discover our historic books. We will target two areas within our 25,000-book collection to pilot this new people-centred cataloguing process underpinned by a framework of historical empathy. The first are books detailing travel to and information about East Asia, concentrating on China, and the second are books on folklore and myths in the Yorkshire / Lancashire border near Manchester. We are working with a group of critical friends with expertise and lived experience relevant to these collections as well as with our partners the Wai Yin Society in Manchester and the Centre of Folklore, Myth and Magic in Todmorden.

The books of journeys to China often detail journeys or voyages across other countries in the region and the names used to describe the countries and people living there vary (For example, Peking instead of Beijing) and do not reflect modern day terminology. This makes it hard to search and access these items. We want to capture the historic data while making sure the terminology is up-to-date as well as addressing the racist and orientalist attitudes reflected by British travellers in the book descriptions. To do this, we are working with local communities in China Town to make our collection books more accessible and reflect the region’s rich cultural and intellectual history. This is particularly important as the Portico Library is on the edge of China Town in Manchester.

The books about folklore, myth and magic in the northwest and Lancashire / Yorkshire regions also share issues around place names and boarder changes. The Portico will make these books more accessible to people interested in folklore and local customs who live in the areas today through events, storytelling, and work with school age children.