Print Green

The library's hardest working printers - Romeo and Juliet - are now taking reservations. From now on, when you print to these printers, you will need to go through a couple of simple steps to release the document to print.

This should help reduce the enormous amount of wasted and abandoned print jobs. As a measure of how hard these two printers work, each one on average prints in a week as many pages as the library's main floor photocopier has printed since it was installed last May.

Ethan Sommer of GTS has provided this background information on this change, which the library supports wholeheartedly.

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Printing use at Gustavus has been growing at an astounding rate over the past few years. To give you a sense of scale, during the seven days before spring break 117,145 pages were printed in the public labs.

Gustavus Technology Services has been asked to try to reduce the amount of public lab printing, both because of the environmental impact and because it costs the college a lot of money which eventually has the effect of raising the cost of tuition.

The first step in our efforts is to install "Print Release Stations" on some of the busiest printers on campus. A few weeks ago we installed one in the Olin computer lab and starting today after chapel you will need to use one for the printers at the circulation desk in the library
(Romeo and Juliet.)

In order to use a print release station just follow these simple steps:
1. Print your document as you normally would.
2. Next to the printer there is a LCD computer monitor. Go there.
3. Use the mouse to select your document.
4. (optional) Use the mouse to select a printer.
5. Click "Print"
6. Enter your e-mail username and password.
7. Your document will print.

At this point you will not be charged for printing, however, if you are one of the top few users of printing on campus we may want to talk to you about how best to meet your printing needs.

Based on other college's experiences, we believe that by using print release stations we will decrease the number of abandoned print jobs. By tracking how much each user prints, we can get a better idea of how fairly tuition dollars are being used.

GTS will have staff in the library to help out for the next few days.

photo courtesy of dailydog