Books are my business: Librarian Mary Conway

In 1992, I went to London and I worked in libraries there for five years. Then I came back to Ireland, and did my library qualification degree in University College Dublin.

I went back to England and did a masters in social policy at Brunel University and stayed working there, mainly in charity libraries.

I wanted to come back to Ireland, and I did an interview for Waterford City Council as it was at the time and in 2003 I got a temporary librarian job for a year. I was made permanent, and I worked my way up to where I am now.

In 2014, the city council and county council in Waterford merged and the library service expanded massively. Our newest library in Carrickphierish opened in 2017.

What does your role involve?

The role of the librarian is changing dramatically. It is an exciting profession and no two days are the same.

The public library service is inclusive, so all are welcome. The role I’m in now is a broad one, and covers the Library Service, the Arts Service, Creative Waterford, and Waterford Cultural Quarter.

What do you like most about what you do?

I enjoy working with the staff of my department, I have a team of excellent, dedicated, and well-trained staff, who put the people of Waterford at the centre of everything they do.

Realising that we make a real difference in people’s daily lives by meeting their information needs and also by encouraging them to read and to develop themselves in other areas is inspiring.

It’s so important that people take advantage of the fact that we have a library service that is free and open to everybody.

You can get a book now from anywhere in the country to your local library and you can bring them back at any library.

It is a revolutionary system and shows the huge co-operation between the library services and all the local authorities.

I have been fortunate to work on many exciting initiatives. In particular, the Writers at Waterford Libraries programme, which I started in 2023, has been a tremendous success and has sown the seeds for other literary events.

To work with authors of the calibre of Colm Tóibín, Claire Keegan, Megan Nolan, and Kevin Barry is truly amazing. Being in the company of a writer as he or she talks about their work in a very personal way is mind-blowing.

What do you like least about it?

The only downside of the job is that I don’t get to encounter the public so much anymore.

Three desert island books?

The Country Girls by Edna O’Brien because I grew up in the West of Ireland and moved abroad as a young woman, so this book really resonated with me — the adventures of a young woman and the strangeness of living in the big city.

Full Tilt: Ireland to India with a Bicycle by Dervla Murphy was the first one of her books that I read and it inspired me on my own travels around the world.

It is all the more precious to me now because Waterford Libraries is the custodian of Roz, Dervla’s bicycle, in our Lismore branch; we often get visitors who come to Lismore to see it and get their photograph taken.

I love short stories and a good crime novel, so for my final book I’d bring The Collected Raymond Chandler. Chandler has strong associations with Waterford; his uncle was a solicitor in the city and when Chandler’s mother’s marriage collapsed in the US, his uncle paid for him to go to school in England and he would come over to Waterford for the summer holidays.

• Author Martina Devlin will join Mary Conway for the first Writers at Waterford Libraries event of 2025 in Central Library, Lady Lane, on Saturday, March 29, at 3pm, to discuss her latest book Charlotte and writing life. Event is free but booking is essential, contact Central Library on 051-849975