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

What is your name?
Deirdre Swain.

Where are you from?
Cork City.

Where do you work?
I’ve been working in the Technical Services department of UL Library since December. I completed my librarianship qualification in Aberdeen, Scotland in the summer and worked in a personal library in Cork for 2 months before moving to Limerick.

What do you spend most of your day doing?
I find my work extremely satisfying. I catalogue and classify newly-acquired books. I am working on Spanish books at the moment, which I find very interesting, as I studied Spanish for my degree. I also work on the information desk occasionally. This involves answering queries on the phone and in person. I like this, as it gives me the chance to work in a different part of the library and further develop my reference skills. I enjoy the fact that I am using my languages and that I am constantly learning something new while helping library users at the same time. I like keeping up to date with the latest developments in cataloguing and librarianship, and I read journals such as New Library World, Library Management and Bookbird and CILIP’s Gazette magazine. My job offers me the opportunity to give presentations to other library staff on research topics of librarianship that interest me. I enjoy doing research, so I find this both challenging and satisfying.

Did you always want to be a librarian, if not what did you do before you became one?
I was not sure what career-path I wanted to follow after I finished my degree, and I did an MA in German and Spanish translation in NUIG before deciding that I wanted to be a librarian. While in Galway, I worked as a research assistant for the professor of Spanish, inputting information on journals, articles and books to a bibliographic database and searching for demographic information on Spain. This aroused my interest in library-related work. I have always loved literature, and my MA thesis discussed a children’s novel about life in former East Germany. This interest in children’s literature also influenced my decision to become a librarian.