Jane reminds us, rather sadly, that not everybody is fond of the whuffie system in academic librarianship. It’s “mandatory fun” for some people. Sure, they want to contribute, but on their schedule, not a tenure committee’s.
Yeah, I sympathize. I do. Mandatory fun isn’t. Plus, this conference stuff gets expensive. But you know what? We’re stuck. The whuffie system is what it is. If you ask me (which yeah, yeah, you didn’t), you treat it like any other part of your job that isn’t your favorite part of your job. You budget time and money for it, you find the least objectionable way to fulfill your obligations, and you get on with your life.
Mary Renault in The Praise Singer has Simonides comment that he is not unlike his paid mistress, the hetaera Lyra: he, like she, is paid for favors. “Like Lyra with her lovers,” says Simonides, “I want to be free to pick and choose.” That’s the way to think, I think. If you must be a lady of the night, set standards for how you’ll do it.
There’s only so much whuffie anybody needs. Figure out how much that is for you, and once you’re there, you can stop if it’s not your thing. I mean, in the first-year librarian whuffie sweepstakes, Meredith’s got me blown outta the water. Just no comparison. But that’s cool. I’ve got HigherEdBlogCon, JCDL, TechEssence, a book chapter, and a book contract (with a coworker). That’s plenty whuffie for me, and then some. Meredith isn’t setting a standard I have to live up to; she’s just being Meredith. I get to be me.
Me, I’m playing to my strengths and my personal style when I give tutorials. I’m an experienced teacher, public speaking doesn’t rattle me, and I have an energy level that lets me keep going for three hours at a time (though I tell you what, I could get used to this co-presenter thing). I even enjoy it, feel a satisfied sense of accomplishment when I’m done. The whuffie’s the same as any other presentation, so why not?
Writing-to-teach is also the kind of writing I do best and enjoy most. I enjoy TechEssence as much as I do because that’s the kind of writing I get to do there. (And if anyone was wondering, yes, I put TechEssence on my CV. I’ll blog for whuffie—I just won’t do it on CavLec. Any whuffie I get from CavLec is strictly informal.)
But I’m me. You’re you. Maybe you get a charge out of megaconferences. (I don’t. I’ll go long distances to avoid ’em. The smaller, more specialized conferences are where it’s at for me.) If you do, great! Bypass DASER and go for Computers in Libraries instead. Maybe you dig survey research. (I’d rather eat rats. I’ll take surveys; I won’t design them or crunch their numbers.) Awesome. Journals dig survey research too. The University Librarian at MPOW will love you for it; he’s a quantitative-research kind of guy.
Point being, there’s a ton of ways to earn the necessary whuffie. Lots of niches to fill. I don’t think anybody needs to feel completely at sea about it.
Not that it’s a bad idea to stretch yourself. Formal writing longer than blog-length is like pulling teeth for me. I hate doing it. I procrastinate a lot, I second-guess myself, and it hurts my head. Still, I gotta book chapter to do and I’ll do it. Maybe someday it gets easier.
I still have to find my service niche. I’m thinking it may be conference work; a conference is something solid and tangible with clearly-defined needs and quality metrics. I can do that. Standing committees—well, I’ll do ’em if I have to, but it’s not my thing.
We all have things, you know? Figure out your thing, plan your whuffie-collecting accordingly, and then you don’t have to go all angsty about it.
