Learning to ask
A colleague tipped me off to a symposium taking place on campus shortly, with papers and presentations and all that fun stuff. Is this the kind of thing you want for the repository? she wanted to know.
Well, sure it is. So I promptly composed an email to one of the symposium organizers, sprinkling in a bit of the good old marketing-speke. Hey, I said, would any of your folks be interested in having their papers archived, ’cuz it’ll help their readership and impact?
And what do you know, he said “Hadn’t thought about that—but sure, why not?”
It’s not news that librarians (broadly speaking) tend to sit around and wait for people to come to them rather than going out to people. We throw our doors wide open and fondly believe that’s enough. Even when we talk about ourselves, we tend to tell. This is what we have. This is what we do. You should want what we’ve got.
We don’t ask. We don’t ask enough.
Myself, I hate asking people for things. I have to make myself do it. I don’t mind being asked, not at all, but I have a terrible complex about asking.
Eventually I trained myself to ask anyway. “The worst they can say is ‘no,’” became my mantra. And what do you know, I’ve gotten many more yesses than noes.
I’ll keep asking. I have to. Opening the repository doors isn’t enough.