The main library is on the Oxford Road campus of the university, with its entrance on Burlington Street.

One of the institute's first actions was to establish a library, with a full-time librarian, at premises in King Street, Manchester.

The library provides its members with a range of services and materials, including an extensive collection of electronic resources.

For many years the main library housed the offices of the Manchester Medical Society which had accommodation in the university since 1874.

The first large addition to stock was the library of James Prince Lee, bishop of Manchester, 7,000 volumes in 1869 and then a further instalment.

From 1903 the librarian (Charles Leigh) improved the administration of the library by introducing the Dewey Decimal Classification and higher cataloguing standards.

[16][17][18] For the first thirty years of this period the librarian was Moses Tyson (1897–1969) who had previously been keeper of western manuscripts at the John Rylands Library in Manchester.

Features such as an exhibition hall and a department of special collections were included in the design together with improvements in the administrative accommodation.

After Tyson's retirement in 1965, F. W. Ratcliffe was appointed librarian and a period of further expansion followed which included an ambitious acquisitions policy, the beginnings of library computerisation and better liaison with the academic departments.

Before the extension could be built congestion in the library building had to be alleviated by moving some stock to other locations on the campus.

The design of the extension was modified when actually implemented in 1979 so that a link section united it with the three-wing existing library building.

This new extension opened in the autumn term of 1981 and at the same time the medical and science (Christie) libraries were vacated so that a more coherent organisation of stock became possible.

Ratcliffe was succeeded in 1981 by Dr Michael Pegg, formerly Librarian of the University of Birmingham, who remained until he resigned on grounds of ill health in 1991.

[21] On Mr Hunt's retirement, William G. Simpson, librarian of Trinity College, Dublin, was appointed.