Experiencing the Erasmus Library Staff Mobility Week 2025 in Dublin

This guest post is by Anne Charlotte Danhiez who is the Head of User Training in the Robert de Sorbon Library, France. Anne Charlotte took part in the sixth Irish Erasmus Library Staff Mobility week hosted by CONUL Libraries from the 23rd-27th June 2025. This week is targeted at European professional library staff working in universities or other research orientated libraries with an interest in visiting Ireland. It gives participants the opportunity to engage with Irish librarians and visit many of Ireland's CONUL Libraries. Find out more about the Erasmus programme on the CONUL website. 

An Erasmus Library Staff Week can be boiled down to a few ingredients:

• librarians from the receiving institution organising presentations and facilitating discussions around various topics
• participants from different European countries presenting their libraries, and contributing to talks
• several visits to libraries
• a few local and touristic activities, including an evening all together

Mix all these ingredients, shake them well, and you’ll get an opportunity for everyone to share ideas and get inspiration from all around Europe – an invitation to take what’s best and integrate it in your own library, after enjoying a week abroad.

The 2025 Conul Erasmus Library Staff Mobility Week revolved around “Future-proofing libraries”, and every day or half-day was organised around visiting a library and listening to different presentations, on a specific “topic of the day” from the librarians working there, and from the Staff Week’s participants.

As Monday started with our first visit, to the library of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI), I was immediately faced with a massive cultural difference. The library’s furniture was modern, colourful, organised in various, smaller spaces catering to the students’ needs – everything we librarians strive for, everything I wish I could copy and paste in all the academic libraries of my country, except for one small, tiny problem: budget. And here was the first cultural difference: every now and again, on a door, you’d see a small plaque indicating the name of the person who had financed that space, something unthinkable (for now?) where I live and work. In the meantime, I took pictures to get some inspiration. The day went by, including presentations on the library’s staff and organisation, which also interested me deeply as my own library will create new departments in the next coming months, and will need to adapt its organisation. The day ended with a different kind of visit: a walking tour of Dublin, useful for any newcomer in need of some orientation.

Gaia artwork, Old Library, Trinity College. Picture credit Anne Charlotte Danhiez, 2025.

Tuesday started bright and early at Trinity College Dublin, where we attended different presentations, and it included a visit to the Old Library and the Book of Kells which, as we learnt, is the second most visited attraction in Dublin (can you guess the first one? I couldn’t: the Guinness storehouse). If some of us were impressed that a library and a book could be the first attraction of the city, having already seen them a decade ago I was more surprised by what was new. In lieu of the books, the Old Library has a new resident in this period of transition: Gaia was centre stage, reminding us of the week’s theme by inviting us to look to the future. 

The day concluded with an evening in MoLI, the Museum of Literature in Ireland, which offered us a private tour of the museum, looking at the first printed copy of James Joyce’s Ulysses and all its different translations, all while drinking wine, eating canapés, and talking to our Irish hosts in a beautiful rose garden: that’s an evening I’ll remember.

Exhibition in MoLI, The Museum of Literature Ireland. Picture credit: Sanja Posthumus 2025.

Wednesday was a busy day, as we visited two different libraries: DCU’s Cregan Library in the morning and TU Dublin in the afternoon, which gave us the opportunity to enjoy a sunny walk outside during lunch, as well as listening to different presentations, two of which were on AI – a topic I was keen on, as a librarian who spends most of her time teaching students. Thursday also saw us visiting two libraries: UCD’s James Joyce Library and the National Library of Ireland, where we had a presentation on born digital collections and its pilot project which focused on Marian Keyes, something which was entirely new to me and utterly fascinating.

UCD’s James Joyce library was thought-provoking for me, as the building dates back to the late 1960s (like many academic universities in my country) and it is currently being reorganised and refurbished to better cater to the students’ needs, something we’re also actively working on in my library. As the library offers different cosy spaces, with wood and plants, I found myself sending multiple pictures to my colleagues who love them. What struck me the most, however, were the new sensory rooms, with different furniture, lighting that can be adapted to everyone’s needs, and the sensory, soothing wall, which I would love for my library to adopt.

The Erasmus Group in The James Joyce Library, UCD. Picture credit: Catherine Wilsdon 2025. 

I mentioned cultural differences earlier on: as I heard someone mention multi-faith rooms in their library, I gasped, and quickly, comically realised I was the only one who was so surprised. I’m French – religion is banned in all public spaces, but during this Erasmus Library Staff Mobility Week, this was just another avenue of possibility. Another cultural difference I encountered followed me throughout this week in Ireland and was even more striking to me. Not only did most librarians wear a badge with the LGBTQIA+ colours (June is of course Pride month), there were also “all gender” toilets in several libraries and universities, and a desire to create spaces suited to everyone. We were shown or told about fantastic spaces to come which aim to adapt to new uses (podcast cabins, donor rooms, event spaces…), but more inclusive rooms already exist. Everyone, everywhere, and everything in Ireland felt geared towards inclusivity in all its aspects, welcoming everyone – more than anything else, I think that that’s the feeling I’ll take back with me.

So, did the Erasmus Library Staff Week recipe work on that week of June 23rd to 27th? Dear reader, it certainly did. As my plane landed home, in a heatwave reaching 38°C, I immediately found myself thinking of the nice and cool libraries I visited in the Irish weather – certainly colder, more unpredictable than in my home country, but made all the more special by the warm Irish welcome I received everywhere I went that week: that was truly the magic ingredient. 

Thank you very much to everyone who was involved in this Library Staff Week’s organisation!