Dear List,

How do you all deal with LaTeX? The LaTeX Project describes it as a
"high-quality typesetting system," but it *looks* similar to a few
different software paradigms, and this makes it hard to figure out who on a
university campus should be supporting it.

For example, one could make the case that it's an advanced, low-level form
of word processing, which should therefore be supported with training and
problem solving by central IT, who cover Microsoft Word and Google Docs.
But it's much more than WYSIWYG word processing, and support for IT would
be a very heavy lift.

So maybe instead you think of it as a markup system. In that case, perhaps
it's the library's digital scholarship center that should be providing
support. Yet, it's not really used for the purposes of scholarly annotation
and digital presentation of primary sources that TEI is.

Since it's used for creating beautifully-looking articles and books,
perhaps it's a scholarly communication tool, and hence the schol comm
division of the library should support it. But the biggest use case may be
dissertation formatting, in which case perhaps a university's graduate
school or office of research should take charge (especially if they provide
a dissertation template).

But then, the software is especially good at formatting mathematical
notations, and indeed, the vast majority of dissertations submitted with
LaTeX formatting come from the school of science, so perhaps it is
scientific computing software. In that case, maybe the college of science's
departmental IT units should bear the brunt of support.

The final option, it seems to me, is to call it "just one of those very
helpful things," like regex, that you won't see in any formal or informal
learning environment, and so you have to figure it out on your own to be in
the know.

How do you all parcel this out?

Best,
Dan

-- 
*Daniel Johnson, Ph.D.*
*Interim Co-Director, Navari Family Center for Digital Scholarship *
*English; Digital Humanities**; and Film, Television, and Theatre *
*Librarian*

*University of Notre Dame*
250C Hesburgh Library
Notre Dame, IN 46556
o: 574-631-3457
e: [log in to unmask]