Rewrite. Renew. Reimagine.
The act of rewriting stories has been an essential part of expanding and varying our point of view, reimagining or re-evaluating the past, and envisioning alternative futures. At its most powerful, rewriting, or reweaving narratives can give light and voice to figures whose perspectives are yet to be told.
Yet as we know, stories are not confined to the page or the stage, to song or to screen. Narratives help us make meaning of our experiences, guide how we communicate and think and can configure our path through life, acting as powerful frameworks to help us meet our goals.
This Library and Information Week we are encouraging everyone to re-engage with the library, immerse yourself in the resources and collections, ponder on the stories we’ve been told and modify old understandings with revised stories ...or re-tell them with a fresh new vision.
Want to begin research for your novel? Want to start mapping or expanding your family tree? Want to make an edit in a Wikipedia entry, or unearth something new in the archive? Perhaps you want to reimagine the possibilities for your career, or simply conduct a thought experiment that might lead to a radical, transformative, idea. You can do all of this and much more provided you are equipped with access to information and a desire for deeper enquiry.
Library and information services employees of all kinds are both generalists and specialists. The access to information they provide can empower library users everywhere to reflect on old narratives, rewrite their own stories and others, to revise what we know, to seek and understand a different perspective so that we can make better choices about our future, as individuals and as a community.
From some of our recent conversations with our Members, we know you are asking questions about what the future of the industry looks like and how we can make it better, stronger and more inclusive. This curiosity will inevitably lead each of us to consider and propose solutions on how we could rewrite, refresh and reimagine our careers, workplaces and the industry as a whole.
We hope this theme will spark some ideas about activities and events for your library users this LIW. We also hope you will join in some of the industry focused days that encourage conversations about new ways of doing things and the future of your career and the profession.