Library services
How to find the Library, register and access its catalogue.
Location
The Library of the Open Learning Centre for Languages and Academic English (OLCLAE) is situated on the lower ground floor of the Samuel Alexander Building.
It is most easily accessed via the South entrance and is at the far end of the Lime Cafe/Student Hub area.
Library and reception opening hours (semester)
- Monday to Friday: 9.30am to 5pm
Library and reception opening hours (vacation)
- Monday to Friday: 9.30am-1pm, and 2-5pm
Resources and catalogue information
The Library stocks a wide variety of materials in text, audio, CD-ROM and DVD formats, including more than 4,500 world cinema titles.
Resources are shelved by format, and corresponding items (from the same title) have the same catalogue number.
- The Open Learning Centre for Languages and Academic English (OLCLAE) catalogue
- The University of Manchester Library catalogue
- The University of Manchester Library databases page
Dictionaries for use in exams (for one-day/overnight loan) are available from OLCLAE Reception.
Audiobooks and eBooks
- LibriVox - Free audiobooks from the public domain (via podcast or catalogue).
- Project Gutenberg - The oldest producer of free online books.
Registration
Registration is free, and is open to all staff and students of The University of Manchester - including students attending University language courses for members of the public.
Registration forms are available in the OLCLAE reception.
Security, loans and fines
- All loans are free of charge.
- All loans are made against staff/student ID cards.
- Students may borrow up to three titles at a time (which may consist of several components, eg. a book, DVD, a CD).
- For the majority of resources, loan periods are flexible, with the option to renew.
- Some resources are only available from Reception. These include digital recorders, headsets and external drives for DVD playback.
- Where reserve list items are borrowed, student ID is retained by the OLCLAE until the return of the loan.
- We do not charge fines on overdue loans. Please help us keep resources available for other OLCLAE users by returning your loans on time.
- If you lose or damage an item you will be invoiced for the full cost of replacing it, and you will be advised on how to pay via the University's online store.
- An alarm will sound if items are removed from the Library without authorisation.
Loans can be renewed:
- in person at the OLCLAE reception;
- by phone: +44 (0)161 275 3013;
- by e-mail: angela.farrand@manchester.ac.uk.
Full details of the cataloguing system and loan policy are in the Library user guide, which is also available from Reception.
Languages
The OLCLAE Library stocks resources in the following languages:
Albanian, Amharic, Arabic, Azerbaijani, Basque, Bemba, Bengali, British Sign Language (BSL), Bulgarian, Burmese, Cambodian, Cantonese, Catalan, Chinese (Mandarin), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Filipino, Finnish, Flemish, French, Gaelic (Scottish), Georgian, German, Greek, Gujarati, Hausa, Hawaiian, Hebrew, Hindi/Urdu, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Kazakh, Korean, Kurdish, Lakota, Lithuanian, Luxembourgish, Malay, Maltese, Marathi, Mohawk, Mongolian, Navajo, Norwegian, Panjabi, Passamaquoddy, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Sanskrit, Serbian, Serbo-Croat, Sinhalese, Slovak, Slovene, Somali, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Tagalog, Taiwanese, Tamil, Thai, Tibetan, Tswa, Turkish, Ukrainian, Uzbek, Vietnamese, Welsh, Wolof, Yoruba, Yucatec Maya, Zulu.
Group viewing area
The area next to Reception houses two LCD screens for group viewing of DVDs and Blu-rays, and a multi-region DVD/BluRay player.