I went looking for interesting January 30 events with which to draw parallels to our currents state of hopeful flux (new CIO, new Provost, new President) and found several gloomy events:
- Charles I of England beheaded in 1649
- Oliver Cromwell “ritually executed” in 1661
- The Beatles last public performance in 1969
- Bloody Sunday in 1972
I found little in the way of uplifting major events on January 30, but I suspect Wikipedia editors (like the rest of humanity) are more fixated on the dramatic and shocking than on the propitious.
What can we look forward to in the year ahead? We can’t know for sure, but I know what I am hopeful for:
- strong, thoughtful, decisive leadership
- a renewed and public commitment to library services in both the traditional and technological arenas
- an acknowledgement of the resource shortages that have plagued us since the 2008 financial crisis and a plan to address them in the short and long term
- efforts to build a supportive, inclusive and welcoming culture
- free ice cream
It’s not easy to keep ourselves focused on the positive when there are plenty of negatives to focus on, but we have a whole new world ahead of us. Which brings me to my post title. This post was supposed to be about A Whole New World. I am embarrassed to report that for 20 years I have been laboring under the misapprehension that the song “A Whole New World” was from An American Tail. Turns out it’s from Aladdin. But since I like the metaphor of LTS as Fievel, bravely embarking on a promising but scary new journey, I’m going to envision our road to the future as paved with cheese. I like cheese.