From: Sandy Thatcher <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Mon, 17 Feb 2014 19:30:59 -0600

Most general IT staff at universities have no familiarity with
publishing, and thus their usefulness to presses is limited. At Penn
State we were fortunate to have a full-time dedicated IT staff person
from the early 2000s on, but we were the exception rather than the
rule for small and medium-sized presses. Before that time our IT work
was done by other people on the staff who had other responsibilities,
such as designers or marketing staff. I believe that is still the norm
today for smaller presses.


> From: Ken Masters <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Mon, 17 Feb 2014 11:34:21 +0400
>
> Hi All
>
> Sandy, when I refer to the IT Staff, I'm talking about the
> institution's IT Staff - in other words, the university or college's
> IT support staff who may have an impact on all servers that fall under
> the university IP address.  But, whoever it is, there must be
> _someone_ who is dedicated to the setting up, maintenance and support
> of the publisher's servers (even if out-sourced) -  or are you saying
> that that type of work is taken on in an ad hoc fashion by regular
> publishing staff?
>
> Regards
>
> Ken
>
> ------
>
> On 17 February 2014 04:36, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>>  From: Sandy Thatcher <[log in to unmask]>
>>  Date: Thu, 13 Feb 2014 20:53:42 -0600
>>
>>  IT staff? When you're talking about university presses, as Joe was, I
>>  daresay with few exceptions only the larger presses have anyone on
>>  their staff dedicated to IT issues.
>>
>>  Sandy Thatcher
>>
>>
>>  At 8:48 PM +0100 2/13/14, LIBLICENSE wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>  From: Ken Masters <[log in to unmask]>
>>>  Date: Thu, 13 Feb 2014 07:50:51 +0100
>>>
>>>  Hi All
>>>
>>>  I think Joe is correct.  And I think part of the reason is that, in
>>>  huge organisations, so much responsibility has been handed over to IT
>>>  staff, that very little of what they do is known to senior management
>>>  (apart from the IT staff who serve in senior management, of course).
>>>
>>>  This is a very real problem, because senior management tends to
>>>  classify everything to do with computers as "IT stuff," and fails to
>>>  see that what their IT staff does reflects directly on the
>>>  institution, especially when institutional ethics are involved.   In
>>>  this case, the IT staff will know that they are collecting data, but
>>>  it is likely that the senior management don't know about it.  (For
>>>  example, how many librarians on this list have ever asked their IT
>>>  staff about what information they are gathering on their users, how,
>>>  where and for how long the data are stored, and discussed the ethics
>>>  of that?).
>>>
>>>  To answer your question regarding instances of tracking by
>>>  organisations: I don't know of any, but the study of such tracking by
>>>  medical organisations that I mentioned in my previous mail can be
>>>  found at http://ispub.com/IJMI/6/2/14386
>>>
>>>  I attempted to follow up on that study by surveying the medical
>>>  organisations, trying to get their opinion on how much they knew about
>>>  the data gathering, and how this fitted in with medical ethics (given
>>>  that there was almost no informed consent on the data gathering).  I
>>>  received a 1% responses rate, so, obviously, could not publish
>>>  anything.  Apart from normal low response rates to surveys, I would
>>>  think that the non-response rate probably had to do with
>>>  organisations' closing ranks, or, because it would have been seen as
>>>  "IT stuff," would have been forwarded to the IT dept, and they
>>>  certainly would not have responded.
>>>
>>>  Regards
>>>
>>>  Ken
>>>
>>>  ------
>>>
>>>  Dr. Ken Masters
>>>  Asst. Professor: Medical Informatics
>>>  Medical Education Unit
>>>  College of Medicine & Health Sciences
>>>  Sultan Qaboos University
>>>  Sultanate of Oman
>>>  E-i-C: The Internet Journal of Medical Education