Manchester City Council

Central Library temporary closure

The Arts Library will close at 8pm on Thursday 1 April 2010, as part of the restoration and refurbishment of Manchester Central Library.

More information about the closure of Central Library

Information about subject library services - Arts, Language & Literature and Science & Humanities - available while Central Library is closed

The Arts Library at Manchester is probably the premier public library collection of material on art and design outside London. Our stock, of over 10,000 lending books, 80,000 reference books, together with videos, microfilms, magazines and periodicals, covers art and design, the performing arts and also sports and games.

We have a wide variety of material to suit the needs of a wide variety of users:

Culture - we cover art galleries and exhibitions, ballet, theatre and cinema.

Information - on arts and sports - addresses, images and illustrations, sources and statistics , what's on where.

Learning - at whatever level, from pupils preparing GCSE art projects to teachers preparing lessons, from students working on dissertations and theses to senior citizens learning new skills and hobbies.

Leisure - books and resources for both amateurs and experts - actors, anglers, or antique collectors, footballers, philatelists and photographers, walkers and water colour painters!

Jobseekers - you can find careers information and college prospectuses for the subjects we cover. You can browse through job advertisements in periodicals like Building Design, Design Week, Museums Journal and The Stage .

We have unique and unusual items in our collections, such as early garden design books and gardening journals, Victorian theatre posters/playbills  and nineteenth century fashion plates. We have exhibition catalogues from the City Art Gallery dating back to the nineteenth century and modern catalogues from galleries like the Tate about artists like Tracy Emin or Damien Hirst. We also have a collection of rare early sales catalogues from local and national auction houses.

We have an excellent dvd and video collection specialising in classic/art house films from Annie Hall to Wild Strawberries. We also have videos covering subjects like artists and art movements, fashion, ballet and dance.

We subscribe to a number of magazines and journals including Architects Journal, City Life, Empire, Radio Times and Vogue. Back copies are available for most of the titles we subscribe to and we have extensive runs of many titles some dating back to the nineteenth century (such as The Builder, The Studio, Journal of Decorative Art).

Coin operated photocopiers are available in the Arts Library. Black and white copies cost 10p (A4) or 20p (A3). Colour copies cost £1.00 (A4) or £2.00 (A3) (all photocopying is subject to copyright regulations and some older material may not be suitable for copying)

The Arts Library
Central Library
St. Peter's Square
Manchester
M2 5PD
UK

E-mail arts@libraries.manchester.gov.uk

Telephone (National) 0161 234 1974
Telephone (International) + 44 161 234 1974

Fax (National) 0161 234 1961
(International) + 44 161 234 1961