Early tomorrow morning I will be taking a train to Galway city. I still haven’t finished packing my bag, or washed my hair, but at least I have finally escaped the library. There were times this week when I believed I never would.

Summer is, in some ways, the quiet season in the library. Many of the regular groups take a break from meetings so there’s less calendar and room setup chores. We don’t have visits from schools and many of the publisher catalogues and other promotional efforts take a pause before cranking up for a big pre-Christmas push from September onwards.

In some branch libraries they take advantage of this more peaceful time to get in the decorators or move shelving. However, as Boss Lady reminded us at the planning session, we’ll be having none of that excitement t...

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