Comments on sources and types of service
Whitney Johnson · 1972
I'd like to ask for a show of hands: How many of you represent state-supported institutions? How many represent private institutions? Looks like Just about half and half. Okay. I think that we all know, and it probably is appropriate to re-emphasize, that the computing needs of any educational institution fall into several categories. We may narrow these down to three, roughly, as being the instructional support area, the research support area, and the administrative support area. (keeping grades, student records, registration, and what-have-you). Of course some would have to add extensions to public service and other areas, but you can usually break those down into components that fit into one of these three. Whether you have a small institution with a hundred students, or an institution with thirty or forty or fifty thousand students, you have all of these components having a need for computing at your institution. Now some of you are only interested in one of them. But someone at your institution also has to be interested in the others. As our keynote speaker indicated, there are cases where you simply can't afford to get involved with the computer in some of the administrative tasks, and I think we should recognize that. We, as the computer people on campus, need to look at projects to make a decision, or to help our administration make a decision as to whether it is cost-effective to do it this way, or should we really just say, “Keep doing it by hand. It's the best way.”?