Every month someone from the Library chooses an interesting object, book or document from the Library collection, which is displayed in the hall of the Library. Here are a selection from 2018. Click on the links to see more information.
January Graphic books
Highlighting an interesting new line of acquisitions - graphic books on a political theme, where the focus of a book is at least as much on its visual appeal as on its words.
April Marking Workers’ Memorial Day on 28 April
We focused on the volunteer rescue brigades who put their own lives at risk after the numerous disasters which blighted British coal mines in the past.
May The Tool, a suffrage pamphlet
Written in the early 20th century, this leaflet was published to persuade and convince the working class women of Britain to support the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies campaign for the right to vote.
June Spanish Civil War photograph - Mary Slater
A photo from May 1937 which has been digitised in superb quality as part of a Salford Advantage Fund project. It shows nurses and a Spanish doctor on the Aragon Front, including Lancashire nurse Mary Slater.
July Happy 70th birthday NHS
On 5 July 1948 the NHS was born, and our objects of the month are two pamphlets from the time.
September ‘The greatest poem of political protest ever written in English’
This rather battered piece of sheet music, Men of England, takes words from Shelley's Masque of Anarchy and was given a musical setting in 1925 by William Henry Bell. We have been fortunate enough to have acquired a first edition of Masque of Anarchy as part of our Heritage Lottery Fund project Voting for Change.
November Thomas Ellison's scrapbook
We marked the centenary of the end of WW1 by highlighting a conscientious objector's scrapbook, which contains all of his official documentation from the passing of the Military Services Act in January 1916 to his final release from prison in 1919.
December Women vote for the first time
Woman: a citizen was a handbook published in 1918 for newly emancipated women, setting out the workings of parliament and the constitution.