Longsight Library, one of Manchester’s busiest libraries outside of Central Library, is undergoing a major refurbishment at present. Already it’s looking somewhat stately with it’s dark slate grey carpeting and freshly painted walls and woodwork! To ensure minimum disruption to our customers the work is being completed in sections, quarters to be precise. The library team and contractors have worked out a system that enables business as usual just in a smaller space for a wee while.
The children’s area has moved into a space that is lighter, brighter, and more open. Already families and children are making use of the space, hanging out playing with toys, doing homework, and reading books of course! The library team has focussed on children post pandemic in a bid to support schools in their mission to get children’s reading levels back on track. In fact our data has shown that Longsight Libraries interaction with schools has gone through the roof! We’ve gone from a very healthy just below 3000 school children visiting the library or being visited by the library in their school setting in the school year 2019/20 up by 137% to just over 7000 in this last academic year!
All the shelves in the library are now on castors which means we can more fully fit the cultural and creative needs of the community. Longsight Library has for many years held extremely well attended events such as International Mother Language Day, Fun Palaces, Theatre performances etc. We now have a more flexible space that all our community will benefit from and are able to cater more easily to creating the spaces that work best for all.
An exciting element of the refurbishment is that we have created 2 new community rooms that can be used as a study space when not in use for meetings.
The last part of the transformation will require us to close from 23rd August 2023 and reopen on the 6th September 2023 so that we can complete all the works. When you return, we will be introducing longer opening hours via our Open Plus system, so please sign up for membership of that as soon as you can! Also a big thanks to our staff who have continued to deliver a fantastic warm and helpful service to our customers.