Manchester Central Library, including the Ahmed Iqbal Ullah RACE Centre, will be temporarily closed from Saturday 2 August to Monday 25 August 2025 while an important IT upgrade takes place.
During this time, the building won’t be accessible to the public or staff, and we won’t be able to provide access to archive or library collections. This includes any books requested for collection from branch libraries—these will be processed once we reopen.
But we’re still here for you! Our team will be working remotely and available by email. We’ll do our best to assist you during this time, although we won’t be able to help with collection-related enquiries until we’re back up and running.
You can still engage with our digital collections while we’re closed – there are plenty of interesting stories and resources on our blog, oral history extracts on our Soundcloud channel and digitised items on Library Digital Collections.
To find out about alternative spaces you can use during this period please see these webpages from Manchester City Council and the University of Manchester Library.
Thank you for your understanding—we can’t wait to welcome you back soon!
