Pop-Up Visitor Information Service at Central Library
This August, the Visitor Information Centre has been assisting visitors to the city centre with a pop-up stand on Library Walk.
Based in the Glazed Link, while their usual office in the Central Library has been closed for a major Wi-Fi Upgrade, their pop-up service has seen the team help over 6000+ Library users and tourists visiting Manchester over the summer.
As the third most visited city in the UK, August is peak season for tourism in Manchester. In recent weeks, visitors have been flocking to our city for major events such as the England vs India at Old Trafford Cricket Ground, the new season of the Premier League, the Peterloo Massacre anniversary, the Pride parade and festivities this weekend, plus the beginning of the Women’s Rugby World Cup 2025, have drawn thousands to the city from all over the globe. Within the city centre itself, major exhibitions such as ‘The Cat That Slept for a Thousand Years’ at the Manchester Museum, the newly refurbished exhibition spaces at the historic John Rylands Library, and the Titanic Exhibition at Manchester Central (which featured contributions from the Central Library based Archives+ team), have all proved highly popular attractions.
Interacting with visitors from all over the UK and the globe, the dedicated team at the Visitor Information Centre pop-up stand have assisted over 2600 tourists with their enquiries since 4th August, helping each and every one make the most of their time in the city.
Alongside their expert tourism knowledge, the team at the pop-up service have also assisted over 3500 Central Library customers with a range of enquiries while the library has been temporarily closed. From printing solutions, re-direction advice to the other local Manchester libraries, as well as accepting hundreds of book returns, the team have been working diligently to make the library closure as problem-free as possible for our much-valued customers.
An action packed few weeks that has seen over 20 Central Library Staff working outside the building to help our regular visitors and those seeing the city with fresh eyes, they have enjoyed meeting everyone from tour guides to tourists, sports fans to international rugby players limbering up for their World Cup matches in Salford this Weekend. The team were also delighted to share a space with the Wales, Scotland, Samoa, and Australian national rugby teams, whose opening ceremony for the Rugby World Cup took place in Glazed Link and adjacent Rates Hall of the Town Hall Extension last week.
From 2 – 25 August, Central Library and the Town Hall Extension have been temporarily closed while a faster, more reliable, superpowered Wi-Fi is installed across both the Library and Town Hall Extension.
The Central Library and all services operating within the Town Hall Extension will re-open on Tuesday 26th August at 9AM.
With a number of special events and a special ‘Sunday Funday’ planned between 12-4pm on Sunday 31st August, the Central Library team are looking forward to welcoming you back.
Find the full events schedule for Central Library listed on https://librarylive.co.uk/
Above: Five cages filled with all of the book returns to Central Library accepted during the three-week closure period.
