Printing Policies and Hints

2-11-02 - This week's article is focused on answering the most common questions I get about printing in the labs. Most of this information is available in our Lab Handbook, but it is worthwhile to post this on the site as well (repetition, repetition...).

These guidelines are meant for students and faculty, and if followed, can help us make the most of our printing budget.

As most of you already know, we still provide free laser printing in the labs. This is a quickly disappearing service on campus due to the costs involved. One of the major printing problems we have in the labs is the incredible amount of prints that are wasted every semester. This is either as a result of inappropriate copying, or failure to pick up printed items. I'd say about 15-20% of the prints that come through the lab fall into the last category. We are literally throwing away student lab fees on wasted paper and toner.

It is my goal to reduce this waste and reclaim that part of our budget.

Here are some guidelines for students AND Faculty. Yes, these are long, but I am trying to clarify some past misconceptions and offer tips on how to reduce waste and speed up the printing process.

1. Lab printers should not be used to print copies of course materials. You may print out one copy, if necessary (i.e., your office printer is broken/nonexistent) and have the Copy Center make copies. Your department may have a standing order for this. In addition, it will be a lot faster and cheaper (plus they collate, staple, and 3-hole punch!). UPDATE - some departments are now encouraging faculty to reduce printing costs by providing documents online. While this is a good idea, please keep in mind that students will very likely print out these documents in the labs, thereby increasing our paper usage, and taking business away from the Document Center (which we would like to keep in this building...).

2. Large course packets should be made available at our Document Center if possible. While having online copies is convenient, such copies are seldom optimized for quick printing (most I've seen have been scanned documents, which, of course, are much larger in file size than a text or HTML document). The major fact to remember is that students tend to print everything you offer on your course web site (notes, content, everything). It is not unknown for a students to print out every single page you offer on your web site. I have seen this many times.

3. Have your students submit work such as PowerPoint presentations or web pages electronically rather than having them print out each individual page. Such items are intended to be seen and used on the computer, and you will get a better idea of how the project works as well as how it looks. Again, this will save a lot of paper.

4. Teach your students how to optimize files for printing. Many times, we will have a huge traffic jam on the printers because a particular file has not been optimized. This usually can be accomplished by flattening layers in Photoshop or reducing the dpi of an image (anything over 200-300 is overkill on these printers). You can reduce the file size by well more than half with these actions, and file size does relate to printing speed. Look for a future article on this website for more specific ways to reduce print time and problems.

5. If you offer PowerPoint slides for download, please teach your students how to print slides 6 to a page instead of each slide individually. For most purposes, the text is large enough to read at that smaller size. If there is a figure that needs to be printed larger, they can select to print just those slides at full size. This could reduce paper waste dramatically (i.e. 5 pages of 6 slides or 30 single pages - very big savings). This also has a bonus side effect - can you imagine trying to carry around all that paper?

6. I do have to put in a note about types of paper that can be used in our printers. We allow only our standard paper, or laser certified resume paper to go through our printers. Here is a list of what is NOT allowed due to maintenance and time issues (it can take up to four times as long for us to feed a paper that is not in our standard trays).

1. Vellum - I have had vellum melt into one of the printers. This is not fun to clean up, and it put a printer out of service for awhile. Please make sure that your students understand this policy very clearly. There are no exceptions to this rule.

2. Labels - We do not print labels (adhesives).

3. Tracing paper - This gets stuck.

4. Transparencies - Our printers get too warm for this. See the note about vellum (it melts).

5. Card stock - Card stock is a tricky thing. It tends to cause toner deposits to build up and land on other students' prints (who end up having to reprint their docs).

6. Thicker papers - All of these items can cause mis-feeds, jams, and melty messes.

7. Thesis copies are not allowed. One copy may be printed, and additional copies may be made through the Copy Center. We cannot afford to do copies; it is cheaper, and faster, for the student to have it done at the Copy Center than it is for us to print it. In addition, we will not print onto thesis paper. We do not load this paper into our trays, nor can we manually feed that volume of pages. All copying to the final thesis paper must be done at the Copy Center.

8. Please remind students to pick up their prints quickly. We do not have room to store prints all day, and certainly not overnight. Students tend to forget about items they have printed if they wait too long to pick them up. If we can reduce this problem, we can definitely save some money. Our standard rule is to leave prints on the table for no more than one hour. After that is is moved to an "Older Prints" box in front of my office window.

9. We do have a copy limit on student items for class. Students may print up to ten of a single page item, or up to three of a 3-5 page paper. Other copies must be made at the Copy Center. We also do not allow copies of non-class materials such as advertisements, either for personal or club use.

These policies are in place to assure minimum waste and maximum efficiency in printing. Each semester I make note of the various problems that arise and attempt to adjust these rules accordingly. I feel that if we can reduce our waste and inappropriate printing, we can definitely save money on toner and paper, and can use the savings for other lab improvements.

Jennifer Nieland is the lab coordinator for the College of the Design student computer labs. She is too exhausted to thing of something vaguely witty to close out this article. Better luck next time....