King of His Castle An interview with Robert McKenna, head librarian of Griffith College Dublin.
by Tobe Ezegbu
I
am seated at the library at Griffith College Dublin, researching for an essay. I do not exactly fit the profile of someone who visits the library often, but here I am. Assignment submissions are building up and I am running in the last lap. Desperate times, I guess. I am surrounded by deafening silence. I expected more people at the library, being just a little after noon on a Tuesday, but it is just the occasional visitor walking in and out. Suddenly, the sound of persistent movement comes from behind me. Feet shuffling, inaudible muttering, hums and what sounds like books sliding in and out of shelves. I look back, and there he is. Clean shaven head, glasses partially masking the intense gaze in his eyes as he flicks through the pages of the book in his hands. He continues pacing around the library, rearranging books. He then pauses, looks around with a proud demeanour. This couldn’t be a frequent visitor, no. He seems too knowledgeable and attached to the library. Then, a young woman walks in and confirms his identity. A final level Journalism student asking for recommendation materials to use for an assignment. His name is Robert McKenna, Head Librarian at Griffith College, Dublin. Intrigued by what I had seen, I was overcome by the compulsion to be invited into his world. Why books? For me, it is about a connection to different kinds of information in different places. It is not about being a specialist, but being someone who connects different people and ideas. It has always been the idea of a semantic network. I have always wanted to connect subjects and people.
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Inside Griffith College Library. Photo by Alice Tauleigne What qualities should one possess to get a job as a librarian? The thing about it is, there are a lot of different jobs under that term. For example, there are people who work in catalog and classification, where you need to be very methodical, pedantic and picky, and maybe very literal as well. It is that bifurcation, the split in the profession. The useful skills for a Librarian are Structured Query Language, good with databases, a bit of python programming and data, but these are not me (chuckles), I am the person at the inquiry end. For people like me, I would say it is like being a teacher. Also, being interested in a wide range of topics. To give an example, the other
