Manchester united in supporting UK academia: recent developments at the UK's largest academic datacentre

This is not a paper about strategic directions for Digital Library development. It deliberately focuses on what is being put in place right now in an effort to better support academic endeavour in particular using electronic materials. The examples are all drawn from the UK's largest academic datacentre, Manchester Computing, at the University of Manchester, which, in addition to supporting local needs, receives funding to host services for use by the UK academic community. These services include networking, visualisation, datasets and software provision. Many of the needs being met will be common to a wider community.