This summer, Professor of Government Gary King wanted to buy the Current Index to Statistics, biographical software that searches for articles on statistical methods.

One copy of the software program cost $1,500. But purchasing a site license, meaning everyone at Harvard could then use the program, cost $2,200.

King had his money but wanted to find an extra $700 to buy the site license. He tried to find others in the University who would be interested in purchasing the license, but finally settled on buying just one copy of the software.

King then discovered that the University already had a site license for the software he wanted.

"The University already had a site license; it just wasn't centrally managed," King says. "There are a lot of advantages to being at Harvard but it's hard to coordinate and work together."

King told this story to the Faculty at its October meeting to uproarious laughter. "We can't centralize everything to save money and we can't localize everything to make everyone happy," he says.

Seltzer, who is on leave this semester at Radcliffe's Bunting Institute, says she has experienced similar problems.

When she started work at the Bunting, Seltzer says she was surprised to learn that research fellows did not have access to General Software, a package available to students and faculty in the FAS via the network.

Most of the software on General Software is purchased by the FAS from central administration site licenses and distributed to the FAS.

Seltzer learned that Radcliffe is separate from Harvard and, as a result, cannot use Harvard's site licenses.

This rule applies to the rest of the University as well. A site license bought in one "tub" such as the FAS cannot be used in another.

Like other aspects of computing at Harvard, decentralization makes site licensing complex.

"We hold about 20 licenses and they are distributed all over Harvard, not just FAS," says Steen, who coordinates site licenses in the FAS. "We also make use of licenses which other departments or [University Information Systems (UIS)] have purchased."

UIS may help solve these problems, according to Anne H. Margulies, assistant provost for information systems. UIS just created a new position to coordinate site licenses and hopes to fill it, she says.

Behind the Cutting Edge