Hullistic

Last week I was away for work so I am behind on my oral history project. However I did get registered for the  “Oral History for the 21st Century” Symposium. Additionally, one of the days I was away included training in MS-Project and I subsequently purchased and installed a copy. It wasn’t exclusively for this project but I trying to use it on this project.

Finally, I spent a little time over the weekend visiting with Dr. Richard Hug who offered some advice on marketing and fund raising for non-profits. He suggested a book by Philip Cotler titled Museum Marketing Strategy. This may be a good read to add since my focus this semester is less on actually performing oral histories an more on handling the business of it all.

Anyway, I will advance the project this week and have much more to report in the next posting.

In justifying to people their need to convert paper to digital many point to a study allegedly done by Coopers & Lybrand containing statistical data about the cost of finding, handling, and losing paper documents. I use the term ‘allegedly’ because after searching all over online, in the public library and the university library…I can’t find this study or any reference to it. (A Google search on “Coopers & Lybrand Document Management” yields plenty of results…I looked through the first hundred. Neither library returned a single relevant hit. The best I found was a website that claimed the study was done in 1998). 

The companies that make reference to this study, if they provide any citation at all, keep it vague saying things like “according to a recent study.” Even AIIM articles that reference the study fail to provide enough in the citation to locate the source material.

 When the supposed results of a study are pitched at you, ask to see the source material and judge for yourself it’s efficacy in general and it’s relevance to your situation in particular. Who funded this study? What was the research methodology? What were the ultimate findings? Do the findings reasonably represent my situation? 

The point here is not whether it is a good idea to go digital. This is about whether you are content to do business with lazy, dishonest vendors who cannot back up their claims. 

By the way…if there really is a Coopers & Lybrand study, please point me to it.

Most sales people are constantly competing for attention. They use all kinds of techniques and display their marketing plumage to get other people to give up their most important and completely non-renewable resource…time.

Personally, I think salespeople and marketers should stop worrying about the plumage. The contrived messages like “value propositions,” and marketing collateral. They should quit trying so hard to get attention and instead sit down, shut up and pay attention . Forget about elevator pitches and ‘prospecting’ systems. It’s about other people so go where they are and ask them to tell you about themselves. If you’re not sincere you will of course be switched off because people are smart and they’ll see right through you.

So if you feel like you are constantly competing for attention, get out of sales because you clearly don’t get it. Worse, you are maintaining the “self-serving salesperson” stereotype. Sales is hard enough without those of us who really want to listen, understand and help having to overcome your selfish reputation

In considering the  “Digital Collection Proposal Framework’s” basic questions for my digital collection, the first 2 items on the list keep ringing in my ears. That they are the first two items is important too.

1. What is the purpose?

2. Who are the targeted users, what do they need…?

When I consider a particular collections idea these two questions resonate a a little differently with me. Effectively the question I ask myself is “who cares?”

In part this is fueled by the response I received from 10 random folks when I floated last week’s LinkedIn idea past them…100% responded saying they would not participate in, or contribute to such a system. They all gave slightly diferrent reasons but  essentially there was a 50/50 split between “what’s in it for me?” and “who cares?” I actually think I can handle the first but confronted with the second, I am forced to wonder who really does care?

I am not complaining mind you because the point I think is to build something of value to others (even if “others” is a small number). The point is that in this framework it’s the first question to answer. What if the answer is only that I care?

Thinking this way has me reaching for my marketing hat where on the one hand the answer is that if I care and I think others *should* care I have to create a sales message. If, on the other hand I first identify what a group cares about, create something for them and then create a message to notify them that what I have is available.

If I am comfortable pushing what I care about, I build one type of collection, if I a prefer instead having what others care about pulled from me, I build a different type. Ideally, it is a little of both but there has to be enough pull in the first place according to the framework.

Of course this push-pull issue is not limited to digital collections. Libraries (and everybody else I guess) probably need to constantly be asking themselves whether they are content to serve the pull (which I think libraries at least must do) or whether they in fact have something more than that that’s worth pushing.

Before you critize just remember that when it comes to my opinion, which is all this is, I ask the same question…who cares?