A SLISmate pointed out another possibility to me in email: the practical projects that get done in academia because industry doesn’t want to pay for them.
Ah, yes. Fiefs and the fiefdom system. I know those. The Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies was a fief, though it died when its lord left it. Brown’s Scholarly Technology Group was one—I say “was” because Brown has since gutted it. It exists still, but as a shell of its former self; again, its feudal lord Allen Renear left, and nobody else could fight effectively enough to keep it alive. Allen’s been getting another fief going in his new home.
I sorta work on a fief now, actually, strictly at the serf level. The Puerto Rican Census Project is a fief belonging to a few history and sociology professors.
Yes, the fiefdom model gets some good things done, no question about it; my flippancy as regards naming the system doesn’t mean I lack respect for it. But take a closer look. What do the academics who build and maintain fiefs actually do?
Let me be clear on one point: Some Ph.Ds who work in fiefdom are not academics—that is, they’re not hired as tenure-track teachers and researchers with responsibilities to an academic department. Their sole allegiance to the fief. I’m not going to talk about them. I’m talking about the garden-variety tenured or tenure-track dudette who builds a fief on the side. Why? Because if I were to go the route that SLIS wants me to, combining it with fief construction to further my own interests, that’s what I’d be.
Academics with fiefs manage them. Hire and fire. Write grants. Suck up to industry to get handouts. In the time left over from this and a teaching and research load, they might be able to go to some conferences, do some work of their own. Wish I were kidding, but I’m not. I haven’t dared talk to Allen in months (though I missed his wise counsel last week, I’m telling you!) because he is busily working himself to death, has been since the EPRG got off the ground.
I tell people I’m lazy. Often they don’t believe me. They should. I am a lazy wench; I’d never take on the amount of work Allen has. Especially not for the crumbs of actual work-type work he gets to do, as opposed to all the overhead stuff he must do to keep his fief alive. If I’d had a burning desire to be a grant-writer, I’d not be in library school; I’d be in the work world learning and practicing that honorable trade.
And just to get as far as building my own fief, I’d still have to survive the Ph.D. Not to mention paying for it—I don’t see SLIS finding me a free ride. (What did I say about them making me jump through hoops so that they can get what they want? It feels just as silly now as it did last week.) Sure, sure, PAships, yadda yadda—I did this for half my twenties, and I’m doing it now. I hope I won’t be tagged as too terribly venal if I say that it’s time and past I earned something vaguely resembling a full-timer’s salary.
And then I’d have to earn tenure—it’s dangerous for the non-tenured to put their whole hearts into a fief, because (have I said this before or something?) fief-building is not published research, and published research is what wins tenure.
So, yeah, it’s a nice niche for those Ph.Ds who can land it. Where it falls down for me is that I’d have to go through the whole Ph.D-and-tenure rigmarole first (and even then there’d be no guarantees), and once that’s over I wouldn’t even be doing the part of the fief’s work that I’m interested in.
Here’s the kicker. Academic libraries have this style of fiefdom too. Digital-library fiefs are sprouting up all over; there’s at least one here, and plenty more elsewhere. I’m staking a fair bit of my future hopes on one such fief wanting a text geek of my general description—and jobs I’ve seen posted indicate that I have my head somewhere other than the clouds.
I’d be doing the work I love. And I shan’t have to spend years more of the only life I’ve got doing the Ph.D-and-tenure thing. Sounds like a deal to me.
