Westmeath County Council’s Library Service, currently headquartered in Mullingar Town Centre, manages and supports a network of Branch Libraries strategically located across the county.  The library service is constantly innovating and diversifying in a dynamic and changing environment, taking advantage of technological advancement in particular to deliver a wide and varied range of front-line services to customers.  

Westmeath County Council is seeking dynamic, creative and motivated individuals to fill permanent and/or temporary part-time Branch Librarian posts and also to provide relief cover as required at the discretion of the Council. The role of Branch Librarian is to run the day to day business of the library, delivering quality customer service and assisting in fulfilling our library’s vision to be open, accessible, and a focal point for our communties.  The successful candidate will be required to work on their own but to liase closely with colleagues in Library Headquarters and in other branches, and to work under supervision from Library Management.


Duties & Responsibilities

The Branch Librarian shall perform such duties as may from time to time be assigned in relation to their employment and as may be appropriate to any particular function of any local authority for which the Chief Executive is responsible and carry out such instructions as may be given in relation to the performance of their duties.  The Branch Librarian shall, if required, act for an employee of a higher level and may be required to work outside their normal job description from time to time.  

The duties to be assigned include the following although this list is not exhaustive and may be reviewed from time to time as organisational needs require:

•    Frontline line services to customers, branch library work and service development;
•    Delivering excellent customer service at all times;
•    Deal with queries from the public on the collections and various services of Westmeath County Libraries;
•    Community engagement and library outreach and promotion;
•    Assist library users to retrieve information and access library and other serivces;
•    Use of Library Management Systems, Digital Services and self-service technologies to deliver effective and efficient library services
•    Assist in the organising, running and promotion of local library events (including use of social media) e.g. book clubs, hobby clubs, parent and toddler groups, storytelling;
•    Supporting the delivery of national programmes and services for all members of the community in Reading and Literacy; Learning and Information and Community and Culture;
•    Delivering user education in all areas of information provision including ICT, and eResources;
•    Supporting and promoting My Open Library and self-service technologies;
•    Organising, shelving, maintaining library materials and contributing to collection development;
•    Administrative duties to include data collection and analysis, report writing and cash reconciliation;
•    Building management and health and safety;
•    Any other duties that may be assigned by the County Librarian or line manager.

FURTHER DETAILS FOR THE POSITION ARE ON THE CANDIDATE INFORMATION BOOKLET