Study spaces in the Main Library

The Main Library offers a variety of study spaces. From the busy café to silent study rooms, and quiet spaces in between. There are over 1,800 seats in the Main Library.

There are different kinds of seating in the library, such as traditional desks and soft-seating. Some of the desks have a board to section off each space to provide privacy. Every place has a plug socket. 

Food and drink may be consumed in the café, the Wolfson Room and Library Lounge on the ground floor. You may take bottled water and other lidded drinks, including hot drinks, into the rest of the building.

Group study

There are fourteen group study rooms, which you can book online or at the door. They are very popular, so please be considerate to other students and only use them if you are in a group.

Silent study

There are two rooms for silent study, one on the second floor and another on the third. You don't need to book - just enter the room.

Media Room

As well as housing our high-use CDs and DVDs, this room has study spaces and PCs. It has booths containing iMacs, which are intended for video editing, and AV playback for groups. The iMacs have:

  • Final Cut Pro
  • iMovie
  • GarageBand
  • DVD Player
  • QuickTime Player

Please note that they are not set up for general use, so you won't be able to print or save to your own drive. There are fast USB sockets at the back right-hand side of each machine so that you can save your work.

Researchers' Suite

Exclusively for the use of research students and academic staff, this space is located on the first floor of the library and overlooks University Square. It consists of two rooms with a range of seating, PCs and lockers, and is accessible by swipe card access. The suite is named after physicist Tony Skyrme (1922-1987).

PCs and laptops

You can book a PC in advance. We also have laptops which you can borrow to use in the Main Library.

Alternative study spaces

We have five site libraries, including the Orchard Learning Resource Centre, about one mile from the Edgbaston campus. It has over 200 study spaces, individual study carrels, a group study room, PCs, plasma screens, etc.

There are numerous study spaces elsewhere on campus, including: The Murray Learning Centre, Nuffield Building, Strathcona Building, The Aston Webb Student Hubb Study Lounge, Poynting Physics Computer Cluster, and The Loft in University Centre.

Find your way around the library with our interactive map.

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