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 Samuel Alexander Building.
Opening hours - semester
Monday to Friday: 9.30am-5.00pm.
Opening hours - vacation
Monday to Friday: 9.30am-1.00pm, and 2.00pm-5.00pm.
Resources and catalogue information
The Library stocks a wide variety of materials in text, audio, CD-ROM and DVD formats, and there are a wide range of 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.
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. book, DVD, 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 return of the loan.
- Late return of materials will incur a fine: £1 per day (overnight/weekly) and £2 per day (reserve list), up to the replacement value of the item(s) borrowed.
- 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 or +44 (0)161 275 7960
- via e-mail: angela.farrand@manchester.ac.uk
Full details of the cataloguing system and loans policy are in the Library User Guide, which is also available from Reception.
Languages
The UCAE 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), German, Greek, Gujarati, Hausa, Hawaiian, Hebrew, Hindi/Urdu, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Kazakh, Korean, Kurdish, Lakota, Lithuanian, Luxembourgish, Malay, 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, Uzbekh, 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 BluRays, and a multi-region DVD/BluRay player.
Conversation room
The conversation room, adjacent to the OLCLAE Library, is available for small group work, Face-to-Face meetings, voice recordings etc. For access to this room please ask at Reception. Digital recorders (for use in the conversation room only) can be borrowed from Reception, and OLCLAE staff can then transfer any recordings into various formats.