Library Ireland Week 8-13 March 2010: @ Your Library

What is your Name?

Ailish Farragher

Where are you From? Dublin/Galway hybrid

Where do you Work? Eugene F. Collins Solicitors; I manage the Legal information Centre

Did you always want to be a librarian and if not what did you do before?

Librarianship wasn't an ambition - I was a bookseller for years after college and loved finding "the right book" for customers, assessing new releases and potential blockbusters and, of course, reading. I also worked in my college library, a video store, a model at an artists' collective and briefly in a lily bulb factory in northern Holland. Then a friend of mine and my sister were both studying LIS and it looked like an interesting career option so I applied to UCD..that was 11 years ago.

I've had a varied career to date with experience in public libraries, government libraries, college libraries and semi-state organisations. I'm really enjoying working in a law library - research with a business focus - and I'm learning lots of legal arcana along the way to bore my friends at dinner parties!

What is you average day like? First task when I get in is monitoring news feeds for fee earners /current awareness. Then sort mail, journals circulation, accounts management, give in-house training on our legal databases. All interspersed with research, research, research. I'm currently radically reviewing the Legal Information Centre Strategy with the managing partner in light of changing business needs and an inspiring conference I attended in London in February. How many people do you work with? I am a team of one working for 80 solicitors. What do you enjoy most about the job? Pre-empting the users' needs and finding that definitive case or commentary that illicits the response "Great stuff!"

How do you unwind after a hard day? A meal out would be an ideal way to relax although I usually shed the day by walking at least some of the way home, putting my son to bed and watching Masterchef/River Cottage/Jamie Oliver.