Buy In and Never Giving Up
April 20th, 2006In a post mainly about security issues, Thomas Brevik writes:
“The real issue here, apart form security, is that unless Library 2.0 involves all the various people who work in and around libraries it will fail from lack of support from the really important people. If the ICT-staff feels excluded from the discussion, I doubt that the technology part of Library 2.0 will ever lift off from the ground. Any library attempting to implement Library 2.0 without involving the expertise of the ICT-staff, support personell or any group (including users) have not understood the core concepts of openness, radical trust and communication that are the heart of Library 2.0.”
I’m seeing this in my research on community building. Getting buy-in from the major players in any initiative (online, offline, 2.0, 1.0, etc) is of major importance to the project. I recently read an article that said if you can’t get admin to buy-in, you might as well give up. To me, this is too fatalistic. Educating admin about new technologies is important. If they are not there yet, have a workshop, e-mail articles, be proactive. If you believe in your project, don’t give up.