How cool is this? Tefko emailed me recently to invite me to be a program co-chair of the 2008 Libraries in the Digital Age conference. Every year LIDA has two topics, and in 2008 the topics are “Reference in digital environment” and “Education and training for digital libraries.” Tefko invited me to be the chair for the Education topic, since I’ve been working on the DL Curriculum project. I’ve accepted the invitation, of course. I’d have chaired the Reference topic too, if they’d asked, though I understand that Marie will be the chair for that. That should be fun, working with Marie on this.
To be fair, and in the interest of full disclosure, Tefko is on the Advisory Board for the DL Curriculum project, and we’ve also started collaborating with Tatjana. So it’s not like my reputation precedes me and they asked me to do this because I’m so famous. But still, I do consider it to be quite a complement that they asked. Even if it is because they know I’m staring down the barrel of tenure review and hungry. Though to be fair to myself, the DL Curriculum project has been getting some attention. Mostly because we’ve been publishing and presenting at conferences like mad. (Indeed, Barbara presented at this year’s LIDA, earlier this very week.) Dare I say it? It’s amazing how one’s acceptance rate goes up when collaborating with Big Names In The Field.
Anyway, I asked some of my senior colleagues if they thought this would be a good way to spend my time, as a junior faculty member. After all, conference planning is service, if anything, and as we all know, service is a distant third in the academic triumvirate. One of my colleagues suggested that I can frame (read: spin?) this as leadership. I like that. Another colleague was especially pithy, and made the comment that to get tenure you have to be good, and to get promoted to full professor you have to be good and famous. So hopefully this can be a start on the fame part.
As an afterthought, I suppose the title of this post should be ja sam stolica. But this is one of those cases where humor (if you care to be generous and call it that) just doesn’t translate.