New printing system to cut printing costs
By Lauren Laing
Issue date: 2/5/10 Section: News
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Besides saving costs, the new system will be better for the environment, said Catherine Rudowsky, SRU business and outreach librarian.
Rudowsky said that the library, information technology and networking services have been working on preventing excessive printing for the last three to four years.
Under the new system, after selecting to a print a document, students must bring their student ID card or their Heartland RIDF tags to the printer to swipe it and confirm their print job.
Non-students can get a guest card at the library reference desk.
Rudowsky said that the new system doesn't track what or how often students print, and there is no charge after a certain limit, contrary to rumors around campus.
It'd be the university's decision to charge for printing, but so far it's been adamantly against it, she said.
Rudowsky said that students often accidentally print extra, unneeded copies and don't realize it until after it's been printed. Now, students will be able to see and confirm exactly what they're printing before it gets printed.
Technology librarian Martina Malvasi-Haines said that the system is "just to control printing so that there's responsible printing."
She said that the library is a test site, and the new system will eventually be in place for the entire campus.
"After we track it for two semesters, we will have a good comparison," Malvasi-Haines said.
She added that the new system also decreases the wear-and-tear of the printers, and that the library has already seen an impact.
The system was set up to be a charge-based system, but SRU had Heartland engineers rework the whole system to change that, Malvasi-Haines said.
This caused some major malfunctions at first that frustrated students, but Malvasi-Haines said she thinks students are appreciating the new system now that they see how much it'll help financially and ecologically.
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