I’m at a bit of a loss finding anything helpful to say so early in the year, so this’ll be brief.

I had a nice break, thanks for asking. Some highlights:

• Saw a guy in the supermarket with a T-shirt that said “Same shit, different Dave”. I thought it would be awesome to buy that shirt for both Dave’s in LTR…
• Discovered Wordle, and play it every day. It’s great that you can only play once a day, so you can be addicted, but you can’t waste all day on it. And there’s a te reo version as well, called Panga
• Was given four jigsaw puzzles and have completed two in the traditional way (as opposed to the horse jigsaw picture…)

Mulling over work things since I returned last week one or two thoughts stand out:

• Understanding our identity as a Treaty-led nation, organisation, and library is at the heart of what we want to achieve and how we want to achieve it this year. This won’t happen overnight, but we should aim high, as the whakatauki says: Whāia te iti kahurangi ki te tūohu koe me he maunga teitei (Seek the treasure you value most dearly: if you bow your head, let it be to a lofty mountain).
• This will be another COVID year, but we don’t know what form the impact will take yet, or what initiatives UC will take
• There will be changes in leadership in the Library with Aurelia arriving and Anne leaving, but our work will continue to align itself with the UC strategy
• Our DVC-Research partner units are both in the middle of change. The Postgraduate Research Office is implementing a Graduate College, and Research & Innovation are implementing changes to their structure.
• Our 2022 Operational Plan looks similar to last year’s, and that shows stability of strategy and an assessment that we were going in the right direction last year.
• The Chelsea buns at Café 101 are very very good.