Desktop Publishing: What a Difference a Year Makes Copyright 1990 CAUSE From _CAUSE/EFFECT_ Volume 13, Number 1, Spring 1990. Permission to copy or disseminate all or part of this material is granted provided that the copies are not made or distributed for commercial advantage, the CAUSE copyright and its dateappear, and notice is given that copying is by permission of CAUSE, the association for managing and using information resources in higher education. To disseminate otherwise, or to republish, requires written permission. For further information, contact CAUSE, 4840 Pearl East Circle, Suite 302E, Boulder, CO 80301, 303-449-4430, e-mail info@CAUSE.colorado.edu DESKTOP PUBLISHING: WHAT A DIFFERENCE A YEAR MAKES by James S. Netherton ************************************************************************ James S. Netherton is Vice President for Administrative Affairs at Baylor University, responsible for computing, athletics, institutional research, general counsel, governmental relations, and all business and financial areas. Formerly Vice President for Information Systems, he is also a tenured professor of mathematics and computer science. ************************************************************************ ABSTRACT: At a current issues session at CAUSE88, the topic of desktop publishing released a flood of frustration and complaint. A year later at CAUSE89, a different picture emerged from a follow-up session on DTP. This article is based on experiences shared in those sessions. In the glory days of the Roman Empire progress abounded. One of the great modern advancements was running water. Brought to major cities through aqueducts that remain engineering marvels, water was distributed to households through pipes made of lead. The tragic eruption of Mt. Vesuvius preserved for us a view of life at that time. Visitors to Pompeii today are struck by the then-unrecognized but devastating effects of lead poisoning on those ancient beneficiaries of progress. Although the consequences are not life threatening, desktop publishing (DTP), like the lead pipe, has produced a number of unintended negative side-effects. As was the case with many other software advances, it was produced for the professional but marketed to the novice. But with DTP, the market expansion has often created more problems than it has solved. First, a brief acknowledgement of the benefits. In the hands of a professional, desktop publishing is marvelous. Utilizing good hardware and a quality DTP package, a properly trained, skilled publications professional in a few days can produce camera-ready copy more carefully revised than is normally achieved after trading drafts many times with a typesetting/graphics firm, and at substantially lower cost. Better quality, in less time, and at a lower cost -- those oft-promised but seldom delivered goals of computerization -- are truly available through DTP, but at a price. That price is the service of a properly trained, skilled publications professional. Editing is an art, a science, a profession. Those who master its intricacies are professionals in the finest sense of that word and the road to mastery is long and arduous. An editor is a craftsman refining an author's style and pace. Articles that flow communicate far more than those that must be waded through. Layout design and the judicious use of white space require a different kind of skill, little understood or appreciated by the uninitiated. With the current flood of publications, whether a page attracts or repels the eye often determines whether or not an article is read. Adequate keyboard skills, competence with a word processing program, and a B on a high school term paper do not make one a publications professional. At least not until DTP. On many campuses today, much of DTP is done by novices -- unskilled, poorly trained, and not always willing -- and seldom is it part of a planned, coordinated, effective campus-wide publishing program. In fact, if a campus aspires to a planned, effective publishing program, many uses of DTP can undermine such a program and disrupt other campus services as well. Harsh criticism. How can this be? To understand the forces driving DTP one must examine the challenges facing higher education: rising costs, decreased revenues, declining student populations, snowballing criticism begun by former Secretary of Education Bennett, the Tax Reform Act of 1986, the Alternative Minimum Tax, decreased governmental support, increased governmental control. These pressures, while not entirely new, are more intense than ever before. They have turned many university presidents into beggars, and deans and academic department heads into entrepreneurs. Development, student recruitment, and public relations have become education's most vital activities. Academic leaders at every level feel the need to place these activities at the top of their personal agendas. In each of these endeavors effective communication is one key to success. Departmental newsletters, promotional brochures, and mass mailings are, and have always been, visible responses to pressing problems. Checks and balances counteract pressures. For decades the cost and mechanics of printing provided universities a means of centralized control. Budget oversight and operation of the campus printing plant allowed the administration to decide what publishing would be done and by whom. DTP has eliminated those controls and the stampede is under way. What are the problems created by DTP? Some are obvious, others more subtle. First, material produced with desktop publishing programs has the potential to be mediocre to poor -- if not downright disagreeable. The story of the use of seventeen fonts in one departmental newsletter has been repeated so often it has become legend. Resolution of 1270 dpi will not make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. The earlier discussion of editing and graphic art capabilities explains why. The departmental "publishing expert" is often the secretary, but using DTP software requires a level of sophistication and skill which exceeds secretarial job descriptions. Those who master such skills often request reclassification as an editorial assistant with appropriate pay increases. Those who do not master these skills become a continuing burden to the user services department. In either case, department heads are often forced to request position upgrades followed by a new secretarial position since someone must now assume the work the secretary used to do. To expect any one person to provide all printing skills, no matter how proficient with a DTP package, is perhaps unreasonable. In a printing plant word processing, proofreading, editing, text layout, and printing are done by a team of specialized professionals. Many campus printing operations that formerly operated at a surplus now operate at a deficit. The high volume, easy printing that helped pay overhead and level out workload is now being done in departments. The printing industry is changing swiftly and university print shops are slow in responding. In fact, rapid technological changes pose a major threat to many employees in campus printing operations. Standardization poses yet another challenge. The different combinations of hardware and software provide a wide variety of DTP solutions. Lack of standardization inevitably exacts a high price, and the problems of selecting, enforcing, and supporting campus standards in the area of information technology are well known. The critical areas of development, student recruitment, and public relations have made the corporate image vitally important. Institutions trying to forge a better future have paid consulting firms substantial sums to design a new logo and publications program, only to see the effects undermined by the uncoordinated publications plethora produced by DTP. One well-intentioned computer center produced a superb postscript rendering of the new logo and made it available over the campus network. The president had apoplexy. In a fairly short span of time one family affiliated with a private institution received mailings from the business school (Dad's degree), the English department and the law school (Mom's degrees), the engineering school (daughter's major), the alumni association, the admissions office (recruiting the son), and the public relations and development office (gift solicitation), all with different and sometimes conflicting messages and requests. From the family's perspective, the university was poorly managed and wasteful. Who is responsible, and for what? So DTP causes problems. Should that be of concern to the computing center? If the problems are severe enough, blame may need to be assessed, and the computing organization is a likely choice. Most people confronted with problems look for help and, again, the center is an obvious source. Responses of the computing organization vary considerably from campus to campus. Some wash their hands of the matter: DTP is not administrative computing, nor instruction, nor research. It does not fit traditional services and there are not enough staff to do the current jobs. Other organizations designate campus standards for equipment and software, and provide training and help lines. Classes on beginning and advanced page layout packages are added to courses on word processing, spreadsheets, and data bases. Occasional classes even include editing fundamentals taught not by computing staff but publications professionals. Computer center support of DTP continues to evolve. On one campus training classes formerly taught by computing professionals with an editorial guest lecturer now have reversed those roles -- editorial professionals teach the class with occasional help from the computer specialist. On another, samples of campus newsletters are being collected and confidential critiques produced. Some center staffs have attempted to define and support a wide range of services which aid DTP: high resolution printing, lists and labels for almost every university constituency, and free editorial assistance. And some computing staffs have even become proactive in problem resolution, defining the problems which exist, identifying the issues which need to be addressed addressed, and sharing these insights with the campus management structure. Campuses are establishing a variety of structures to monitor, coordinate, improve, and even control the new distributed publishing efforts. Many have created and disseminated campus-wide style guidelines, especially with respect to use of representative typefaces and the institution's seal and/or logo(s). What is the future of DTP? It will not go away nor should it. It has done much good, and in the future will do far more. For now there are many, many problems to solve which involve time, hard work, additional resources, frustration, compromise, trial and error, and occasional success. But then, which of our activities over the past several decades have been much different? From a discussion of DTP at CAUSE88 to a repeat session at CAUSE89, DTP-related problems identified were much the same, but attitudes toward them were dramatically different. There remains some bad publishing, but improvement is evident and there is confidence it will continue. As for lack of controls and coordination, campuses have coped in the past with the problems of distributed decision making and they are coping with this one as well, each in ways appropriate to their institutional character. New problems are disturbing; old problems merely annoying. We bemoan or perhaps just enjoy sharing new problems; we are quietly confident we can handle old problems. In the past year the problems of DTP have grown old. ************************************************************************