Sanford G. Thatcher retired at the end of June 2009 after twenty years as Director of Penn State University Press. His most significant administrative achievement, besides stabilizing the finances of the Press, was to forge an excellent working relationship with the Penn State Libraries, which resulted in  the joint launching of the Office of Digital Scholarly Publishing in Spring 2005 followed by the administrative merger of the Press into the Libraries in December of that year. Always working as an acquiring editor at the same time, he sponsored over 600 books for publication in humanities and social sciences (including a book on Mexico by UNT History Professor Aaron Navarro). His twenty-two year career earlier at Princeton University Press, culminating in his appointment as Editor-in-Chief in 1985, resulted in the acquisition of over 800 titles. Along the way he gained expertise in copyright law and served as a member of the Copyright Committee of both the Association of American University Presses (which he chaired for twenty-one years) since 1972 and the Association of American Publishers since 1974, as a member of the Association for Copyright Enforcement from 1986 to 1995 (overseeing the landmark suit against Texaco), and as a member of the Board of Directors of the Copyright Clearance Center since 1992, the same year he joined the Editorial Advisory Board of the Journal of Scholarly Publishing where many of his writings on copyright and the publishing industry have appeared. In 2007 he became a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of the British journal Learned Publishing as well. In February 2007 the AAUP released its Statement on Open Access, which he drafted, and Learned Publishing included a lengthier version of it in its July 2007 issue. In retirement, now based in Frisco, Texas, he  continues to work part-time as Executive Editor for Social Sciences and Humanities for Penn State University Press.