Sean Brady: Librarian extraordinaire, crossword aficionado, and board game tragic.

•••

What do you do for a living and what do you love about it?

I’m the Orange City Council librarian, and I love helping people with whatever they need help with. And there’s such a wide range of stuff we do... it’s not just finding books for people. That’s probably the least common thing we do. It’s more often people coming in and saying “I can’t use my phone and I need to fill out this critical thing, I need help to access this government service, I need help to print out this thing, then I have to get it signed and email it back.”

Just being able to help people with navigating technology in the modern world is great, they can be so appreciative. And it’s often seniors. Here in Orange, they can be geographically remote... kids have often grown up and moved away to one of the bigger cities, and they no longer have that support mechanism to help them through stuff.

What is your most passionate hobby?

Board games. I love board games, and the library has a growing board game collection. I’ve got a big collection at home and I really need to reduce it, so a lot of it ends up coming into the library space. I’m moving it to this sustainable place to be used again. In my youth, I loved video games, but I was attracted to board games because they’re just so social. Video games can be kind of isolating, whereas board games you’re face-to-face. I like them when they’re competitive, but not so competitive that people get upset about them, and I don’t mind losing as long as the game was enjoyable. My favourite is Carcassonne -- it was my gateway into the modern era of games.

Where would you go for the perfect birthday dinner in Orange?

Oh, home. We’ve been to Lucetta recently and the new Wine Room, it was beautiful. But there’s nothing like just being at home for a good roast.

Describe your ideal holiday?

For me, it’s probably camping. But I recently had the opportunity to go overseas with the family, and it’s such a joy taking children overseas. They grow and blossom by being in this completely alien culture, even just learning names on the metro station and trying to navigate their way through it. Watching them just lift and learn in another culture is just joyful.

Where is your favourite quiet space in Orange?

I was going to say home again, but I won’t. And it’s not the library -- it’s never quiet and it’s my work. So probably Cook Park. Not on the weekend, it’s too noisy then. But on a nice, not too hot, warmish weekday under the shade of one of the trees.

If you were running for mayor, what would your campaign slogan be?

“Board games for all and a board game space in every town square.”