question: drawing the authorship/ownership line between TW and the internal client

[Gayle Hoffman <Gayle_Hoffman -at- SGSGROUP -dot- COM>]

Hello,
My question is based on a discussion with a colleague.  I work for a very
large company spread all over the world (approximately 40,000 employees).
I write user manuals for applications used within the company so our
clients are the internal business sectors.  The following is an example of
what keeps happening with almost all of the documents that are written here
and then distributed.

One of the business sectors is make up of labs that do quality testing on
all sorts of products.  The  lab application is bought from an external
supplier and then customised or localised for every lab.  The basic end
user manual for this application was written this past summer with the help
of a few SMEs.  The end user manual documentation project was considered
finished in August.  I have just been told that the SMEs are continuing to
edit or alter the documents now without my knowledge, of course.
My colleague says that should be acceptable because the application can be
modified or altered for each lab so the accompanying manuals should also be
altered by the internal clients or SMEs.  In this case, the SMEs are not
native speakers or writers and are not trained or hired to be technical
writers.  They are just doing it because they want it to be done without
going through the technical writers.  Some of the reasons for this include
budget and time constraints.

Is anyone else in this situation and how do you handle it?  Any ideas or
should I just forget the documents they are distributed?  I guess this has
to do with ownership or authorship rights or responsibilities even though
it is within the same company?

Thanks for your help,

Gayle Hoffman
email:
   Gayle_Hoffman -at- sgsgroup -dot- com


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