Greater Manchester County Record Office

The Manchester Room@City Library and the Greater Manchester County Record Office hold a wide range of material relating to the history of Manchester and family history, including a wide range of local history books, microfilm/microfiche and computer sources, as well as the archive collections for Manchester City Archives.

The organisation is somewhat limited on what environmental actions it can take given a planned move to the new Central Library, currently being restored, when it re-opens in 2014.

In the meantime, green champion Nic Rayner has been experimenting with turning a boiler on for one hour, or more on cold days, in the morning to warm the building prior to people arriving, hoping that this will lead to not having to have boilers on permanently during the warmer months. The boilers are generally turned off completely between April and October.

It’s interesting to note that despite lack of temperature control Nic has observed that the volume of archive materials act to stabilise the climate within the building, which has implications for low energy temp management, but only if they have several miles of shelves full of documents.

A bicycle has also been purchased for shared staff use to encourage low carbon travel to meetings.

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Greater Manchester County Record Office is a member of the Manchester Cultural Leaders’ Environmental Forum (MCLEF), a partnership facilitaed by Julie's Bicycle.

MCLEF grew out of a desire to promote and share good environmental practice, and the recognition that good practice can be significantly enabled by working collaboratively. Read more >