Good morning everyone!
We’ve just finished our second week of this new fall semester, and it sure has been a time of change. For you first year students…big changes from moving away from home and leaving friends and family, to new schedules and demands, new friends, and new opportunities. For returning students, faculty, and staff, we too have experienced great changes through the past weeks. Our own children have started college, maybe they’ve started at a new local school, our health has changed for the good…or the bad, we’ve experienced losses, had some great adventures, and certainly endured one dreary wet summer.
Change is not a bad thing, or else our current Presidential candidates wouldn’t be touting it as such a fantastic opportunity in Washington! Granted they each have their own views of what changes means, it also implies how they will each handle change when it’s out of their control.
But, I want to talk about the Library. The Library during the past few years has gone through lots of change. We’re reorganized our periodicals and discarded many print copies that were available in our online databases. We’ve moved our videos, DVD’s, and recorded books up to the main floor, and we’ve moved our popular reading area downstairs. Through the last academic year, this change was met with great approval! Yea us!
Two highlights for us here in the Library are the addition of “books we’re reading” and the rewriting of our mission statement. First, visit the Library web site at www.lyndonstate.edu/library to find out what the Library staff is reading and what we think of the book. We’ve got some avid readers on this staff (several books a week) to one of us that gets through maybe one book a month!
Another highlight for us was that we rewrote our mission statement to the following–
The Samuel Read Hall Library’s mission is to provide a haven for inquiry and reflection. We support students and the broader community by providing resources, staff, and services that encourage research, engage curiosity, and cultivate lifelong learning.
We are so excited about this new statement, and the collaborative processes we went through to get this statement were just truly inspiring.
So, change happens, and it’s what we do with it that counts. On that note, I’m going to leave you with the lyrics to one of my favorite songs, Changes, by David Bowie.
Changes
David Bowie
I still don’t know what I was waiting for
And my time was running wild
A million dead-end streets
Every time I thought I’d got it made
It seemed the taste was not so sweet
So I turned myself to face me
But I’ve never caught a glimpse
Of how the others must see the faker
I’m much too fast to take that test
Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes
(Turn and face the strain)
Ch-ch-Changes
Don’t want to be a richer man
Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes
(Turn and face the strain)
Ch-ch-Changes
Just gonna have to be a different man
Time may change me
But I can’t trace time
I watch the ripples change their size
But never leave the stream
Of warm impermanence and
So the days float through my eyes
But still the days seem the same
And these children that you spit on
As they try to change their worlds
Are immune to your consultations
They’re quite aware of what they’re going through
Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes
(Turn and face the strain)
Ch-ch-Changes
Don’t tell t hem to grow up and out of it
Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes
(Turn and face the strain)
Ch-ch-Changes
Where’s your shame
You’ve left us up to our necks in it
Time may change me
But you can’t trace time
Strange fascination, fascinating me
Changes are taking the pace I’m going through
Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes
(Turn and face the strain)
Ch-ch-Changes
Oh, look out you rock ‘n rollers
Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes
(Turn and face the strain)
Ch-ch-Changes
Pretty soon you’re gonna get a little older
Time may change me
But I can’t trace time
I said that time may change me
But I can’t trace time 
