VALUED SERVICES
Imagine2030
Annual report 2024-25
Community engagement and Library access
Working in partnership with the Office for Social Responsibility the Library held its first Community Drop-In event in April 2025. Members of local community groups were invited to visit the Main Library to find out more about our services and spaces.
The Library Experience (LEx) Team explained how members of the local community could access our study spaces, services and collections, and encouraged people to join the Library through our Community Membership scheme. The Library Student Team provided support with digital skills and access to My Learning Essentials online resources, and staff from the Ahmed Iqbal Ullah RACE Centre, based in Manchester Central Library, highlighted its collection and invited people to use its space.
The Community Membership scheme now has more than 1,300 members. Through this membership and events like the Community Drop-In event, the Library is making a positive contribution to The University of Manchester’s social responsibility goals.
Wellbeing and Mental Health Support reading lists
The Wellbeing Reading List, a resource co-curated by Library and University Wellbeing colleagues to support key aspects of staff and student wellbeing, grew by 50% during 2024-2025. The collection now comprises 450 titles relating to over 60 wellbeing topics, including anxiety, bereavement, stress and burnout; new topics include menstrual health, neurodiversity and university life.
The Library also provides access to key titles recommended by the Mental Health Support Team. The Mental Health Support reading list consists of over 200 titles across 70 topics, including self-esteem, eating issues, addiction, trauma and depression.
Titles are available from the Main Library in print and digital formats. To complement these reading lists we also offer a number of titles on similar topics on our ‘Reading for Pleasure’ service Libby, where our curated reading guide on Wellbeing sits alongside guides exploring many aspects of equity, diversity, and inclusion. On the Libby platform students can enjoy non-academic reading material whether it’s Manga, thrillers, or magazines in foreign languages, and they can easily request their own choices of e-books and audiobooks.
Celebrating ten years of our eTextbook Programme
This year marks the tenth anniversary of our sector-leading eTextbook Programme, which ensures every student on a participating module receives their core reading, hosted on the Kortext platform. Our eTextbook Programme has grown exponentially from a small-scale pilot launching in 2014 with just 4,000 eTextbooks. It is now available to all modules across the University and provides over 130,000 eTextbooks. In 2024-25, 80% of our students benefitted from at least one eTextbook across 1,250 modules.
Student engagement continues to surpass national benchmarks. This year, our students read over 13 million pages and logged more than 130,000 hours of study time on the Kortext platform. The programme plays a vital role in promoting equity, ensuring students have access to essential course materials at no additional cost to them.
The eTextbook Programme also supports the Library’s environmental sustainability goals. By providing digital access in place of printed textbooks, we save over 200,000kg of CO₂ annually.
Looking ahead, we aim to expand our use of Open Education Resources and explore opportunities to replace some of our most expensive textbooks with high-quality, open alternatives. This initiative will further our commitment to social responsibility and sector-wide innovation. As we enter the second decade of the programme, we are focused on ensuring it continues to meet the evolving needs of our students. With the educational landscape transformed over the past ten years, we are committed to understanding what students need in 2025 and beyond - to keep our service truly sector-leading in the digital age.
Key stats
130,000
textbooks provided
80%
of students benefitted from at least one eTextbook
1,250
modules
200,000kg
of CO2 saved annually
Migrating the Library to Windows 11
In 2025 the Digital Support Services Team began the huge task of rolling out the migration of laptops and PCs to Windows 11.
Windows 11 replaces Windows 10 as the foundation for Microsoft's AI ecosystem. It supports AI at both Operation System level (CoPilot), and in day-to-day productivity tools, ensuring that our equipment and our staff are AI ready.
This is a project that will affect every single member of Library staff and many students too. It is essential that the Library both keeps step with the rest of the University and the ongoing adoption of AI in the sector.
The project encompasses student laptops, standalone PCs and staff shared and individual laptops, and is well underway, with most staff resources now migrated to the new platform.
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