The Lenagan Library

For a place I have spent some of the worst days in my life, I don’t hate the Lenagan library as much as I perhaps could.
Located in the dingy basement of the Martin Harris Centre (which is the music, film and drama building at The University of Manchester). The library is mostly for students who cover these three disciplines and stocks a selection of sheet music, recordings, play texts, textbooks on film theory and feature films on DVD and VHS (Yes! VHS!). They stock some very useful books and films as well as some rather oddball choices which I can only imagine were requested by a student years ago and are still here. Yes, The Lenagan is probably the only place on earth you can find the full Kurosawa Collection on DVD next to every single episode of ‘Queer as Folk’ on VHS. Brilliant.
The main let down is that you can’t actually take any of the films, audio recordings or music out of the library. Instead you have to listen/​watch in one of the private booths which are for one person and one person only. These are fine for the physical act of absorbing information, but when it comes to watching a film you really do need others to make up an audience, but The Lenagan staff are committed to people viewing in isolation which is a shame. Also the headphones are rubbish so you often can’t hear the film you are viewing properly which can be a problem.