This Week in LIS - 28 August 2009

Headline of the Week: Go Forth and GoPrint

With the arrival of the student body for the start of the 2009-10 academic year, one of the notable changes in place is the deployment of our campus-wide print management solution GoPrint. Planning for this effort has been underway for a while as we seek to address several goals:

  • Encouraging the community to think about their printing in sustainable ways (both ecologically and financially).
  • Reducing waste in printing (which is a significant issue particularly in public labs).
  • Expanding access to printing services.
  • Promoting accountability in printing on campus.

Campus-wide, Luther laser printers churn out something in the neighborhood of 400,000 pages per month when school is in session. The main public printer in Preus Library alone can top 50,000 prints in a month. By tracking printing more closely we hope to curb expanding costs, and unnecessary waste for the College.

Our initial focus is on student printing. Students will now have allowances for each term designed to cover the academic printing needs. Students will now also be able to print directly to Luther printers from their own computers, which is an often-requested service. Over time, we will roll out GoPrint service to additional areas for employees. Employees will not have allowances, but GoPrint will allow us to provide usage feedback to departments and to bill usage accordingly. It is out desire to provide individual users with all the data and information they need to make the right choices when it comes to printing.

For more information about GoPrint at Luther, we refer you to our website: http://lis.luther.edu/goprint. Frequently asked questions, particularly for students, are also reprinted below for your convenience:

Frequently Asked Questions about GoPrint

  1. How does GoPrint work?
  2. Why is GoPrint being implemented?
  3. How can I check my allowance?
  4. How much paper does Luther use?
  5. How is GoPrint funded?
  6. How can I add more to my allowance?
  7. What if my allowance isn’t enough to complete a print job?
  8. Will my allowance be rolled over at the end of each semester?
  9. My work study requires me to print. Will I be charged for those pages?
  10. I think someone might be using/abusing my print quota without my knowledge or consent. Can you help?
  11. Can I print from a Public or OPAC terminal such as the ones in the Library?
  12. What happens if I have to print articles or web pages for a class?

1. How does GoPrint work?

All print jobs go through the GoPrint server, allowing it to track usage based on the username. The software determines the cost and makes that known to the user prior to printing. The user can then accept and print the job or cancel it.

2. Why is GoPrint being implemented?

GoPrint has been implemented as part of a campus-wide effort to reduce paper waste and rising costs. In the past, printing costs have been spread evenly over all users regardless of how much printing was done. GoPrint will enable LIS to shift the cost to those who use printing most and free funds for other purposes.

Many institutions that have implemented printing systems have found that making users aware of the cost of their printing results in a significant decrease in printing, sometimes as much as 75%. Such a decrease would go a long way towards making sustainability at Luther College a reality.

3. How can I check my allowance?

Click on My Account in either the GoPrint client or Web interface. Your remaining balance will be displayed under Balances in the Credit Available line. A complete history of your Print Jobs, Discarded Print Jobs, and Transactions is also available.

4. How much paper does Luther use?

Paper usage has risen on a yearly basis and with it, the costs involved. Luther spends upwards of $60,000 per year on paper, toner, and printers in the public labs alone.

Year Total Pages Printed
2007 – 2008 1,200,000
2006 – 2007 1,075,000

5. How is GoPrint funded?

GoPrint and student printing is funded through the Technology Fee assessed to all students. Complete information on the Technology Fee can be found here. A breakdown of the services funded by the Technology Fee can be found on page 8 of the 2008-2009 LIS Annual Report Snapshot.

6. How can I add more to my allowance?

GoPrint is tied into your Nordic Cash. If you find your Allowance is expended, simply click Next Purse to charge prints to your Nordic Cash. Nordic Cash can be replenished making payment at the Office for Financial Services from 9AM to 4PM Monday to Friday.

7. What if my allowance isn’t enough to complete a print job?

GoPrint will verify that there is enough funds in your Allowance prior to releasing a print job. If there is not, you can apply a partial payment using your remaining funds and/or click Next Purse to switch to your Nordic Cash. The print job will not be released until complete payment has been made.

8. Will my allowance be rolled over at the end of each semester?

No. Unused pages do not roll over from semester to semester. Likewise, refunds are not given for unused pages at the end of the semester. Instead, the funds for those pages are rolled back into the Technology Fee and used for purchasing new equipment, bandwidth, etc.

9. My work study requires me to print. Will I be charged for those pages?

Each work study office should have a student worker Norse Key. This will allow students to log in and print without affecting their own quota. If your department does not have a student worker Norse Key, please have a supervisor contact the Technology Help Desk and we can arrange to have one created.

10. I think someone might be using/abusing my print quota without my knowledge or consent. Can you help?

Click on My Account in either the GoPrint client or Web interface. Your Print Job History will be displayed at the bottom of the page including when it was printed and from what print queue.

11. Can I print from a Public or OPAC terminal such as the ones in the Library?

Yes. Public terminals (aka OPACs) do not require a log in. When a print job is sent, you will need to go to the Circulation Desk and pay for your print job. The Circ Desk staff will then release your print job.

Jobs printed from a Public or OPAC are $0.10 per side.

12. What happens if I have to print articles or web pages for a class?

First ask yourself – is it essential that I print off this article? Can I read it on the computer screen? Do I need to print the entire article or just a part of it?

If you must print, do a Print Preview first. You may find there are additional pages (i.e. table of contents, ads from web pages, etc) that are not needed. Also consider printing two pages per sheet. This feature is available in most programs. The text is legible and there is plenty of room for notes in the margins.

LIS Blog Highlights from the Week

The following articles are sampled from those available on the LIS Blog:

Notes from LIS Council

LIS Council met August 18th and discussed the following topics:

  • DVD storage options
  • Licensing of streaming media
  • New software to support student organizations
  • New integration for credit card transactions in CBORD
  • Strategies for copier printing and GoPrint
  • Ongoing work to clean out the library basement
  • Update on LIS service point transitions
  • 2008-09 LIS Annual Report follow-up
  • Decorah’s EagleCam and web hosting
  • Metrics for LIS

NITLE Opportunities

As a member of NITLE (National Institute for Technology and Liberal Education), Luther has the opportunity to participate in a wide variety of developmental and training programs intended for faculty, librarians, and information technologists. Events listed at the link below are currently open for registration by Luther participants. LIS Staff who are interested in participating in an event should speak with Christopher Barth. Faculty who are interested in participating should speak with Lori Stanley. Participation is contingent upon available funding and program acceptance.

A full list of events (sortable by registration deadline) is available at http://www.nitle.org/www/events.

Upcoming LIS and Faculty Development Opportunities

Click on the event below for specific information and for a link to register. More information on training and development events is available.

CourseFormatDateStart TimeEnd TimeLocation
Preus Library 40th Anniversary CelebrationLibrary InstructionOct 111:00 am3:00 pmPreus Library – Hovde Lounge
German 201Library InstructionDec 212:15 pm12:15 pmRare Book Room – Preus Library

Notable Internet Resource of the Week: Personas

barth-personas-small.png

Click for larger version

“How does the Internet see you?” is the tagline for Personas, a project hosted by MIT that characterizes use of a name or terms on the web to create a color characterization of associated terms. In reality, unless your name is quite unique, the resulting graph is an amalgamation of likely several people together (I’ve not served in the military, but I have served on a committee or two). The Sociable Media Group from the MIT Media Lab writes of the philosophy of this tool:

In a world where fortunes are sought through data-mining vast information repositories, the computer is our indispensable but far from infallible assistant. Personas demonstrates the computer’s uncanny insights and its inadvertent errors, such as the mischaracterizations caused by the inability to separate data from multiple owners of the same name. It is meant for the viewer to reflect on our current and future world, where digital histories are as important if not more important than oral histories, and computational methods of condensing our digital traces are opaque and socially ignorant.

On the web at http://personas.media.mit.edu/personasWeb.html

Around the Web

Here are a few links to interesting developments over the past week:

infoneer.pngThe links above are selected from material posted to Infoneer.net, which gathers links and comment on the worlds of libraries, technology, higher education, culture, intellectual property, copyright, information, ethics, design, professional identity, leadership, and the future. Subscribe to Infoneer.net RSS

This Week in LIS is published most Fridays by Christopher Barth, Executive Director of Library and Information Services at Luther College for the Luther College community as well as those interested in information services and higher education.

Content is made available under Creative Commons license. Creative Commons License

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