- Alexander Ireland collection
- Architectural plans
- Archive directories
- Bataillard gypsy collection
- Bellot Chinese collection
- Births, marriages, death and divorce
- Books on local history
- Broadside Ballads
- Businesses
- Census records
- Chapbooks
- Church registers list
- City engineers plans
- Coleridge collection
- Commonwealth Games 2002
- Coroner's records
- Council records
- Court records
- De Quincey collection
- Early children's books
- Electoral registers
- Ethnic minorities
- First World War
- Fuller collection
- Gaskell collection
- Gleave Brontë collection
- Grave or cemetery burials
- Henry Watson music library
- Historical maps
- Historical newspapers
- Hospital records
- Immigration records and passenger lists
- Jewish records
- Land tax
- Lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (LGBT) history
- Licensing records
- Mail order catalogues
- Manchester area local plans
- Manchester bomb 1996 and the city's regeneration
- Manchester regiment
- Methodist records
- Nazi collection
- Parliamentary papers
- Phone books
- Photographs and posters
- Police records
- Political and Trade Union records
- Poor Law, workhouses and industrial schools
- Prison records
- Rate books
- School records
- Second World War
- Shorthand
- Society and group records
- Sound archive
- Sutton Witchcraft collection
- Theatre collections
- Tracts
- Trade catalogues
- Wills and probate records