Quinnipiac has implemented a new state-of-the-art printing network.
Six new printing stations have been installed in the Arnold Bernhard Library – replacing the north printer, south printer, rotunda printer, reference printer and the two copier machines. All six new power stations are both printers and copiers and require a person’s Q-card to use.
The new library-exclusive system can receive print requests from any networked computer on campus. The new system will use a single queue per machine and relieves the printing person from penetrating people in pursuit of one’s printings.
Under the recently released system, the person no longer will need to select a specific library printer but rather just send his or her job and walk to any library printer, swipe his or her card and chose to delete or print the jobs; if one printer has a long line, he or she can simply walk to a different printer relieving the wait time.
The printing network will no longer use a sequence but rather allow the person to walk over whenever ready and print his or her job. When one logs into the system the printer automatically recognizes who the person is. The only downside, according to Frank Villa, manager of academic computing, is if you use a computer that does not require logging in, such as on the first floor of the library, and misspell your user name, it will never print and there is no verification of one’s ID.
However, Villa said there will no longer be “piles of jobs” that students and faculty must sort through to find his or her job. To keep the system running effectively, all jobs not printed within 24 hours are deleted.
If a printing job jams that a student cannot recover, students will have 30 minutes to ask a librarian for help before losing the job permanently.
Students need not worry about people tracking the specifics of who is printing what.
If an issue with one’s Q-Card arises, one must go to the Q-Card center for a new card and if the card is no longer working, no charge will be issued.
The long-term expectations of the new system include a system to charge students and faculty who go beyond “a reasonable amount of printing.” However, such a system is currently not in the short-term future and is designed to encourage people to think about what they print.
Copying charges will remain the same as in the past, 10 cents per copy. However, the number of locations where students can photocopy things has tripled to six locations, up from two locations.
A new site has been created by David Vance, manager of training and communications of information systems on campus, to educate students how to print content from a PowerPoint file. The site can be accessed by logging into http://learn.quinnipiac.edu/at/communicate/powerprint.html.
