Jane, of A Wandering Eyre, wrote in A Story in Numbers about the wastefulness that results because her university library offers free printing. Our library is in the process of instituting printing charges. We put in place the logon procedures and the print release stations this summer that will be necessary to charge for printing. Charging will begin at Fall Break, October 20th.

This library noted a quadrupling of printing since four years ago, about the time ERes became available. Of course, four years is an entire generation of students, so our current students don't remember when you had to check out that journal article from 2-hour Reserve and photocopy it at a cost that is higher than we will be charging for printing.

Unlike the powers-that-be at Jane's institution, our administration at all levels wanted to get the printing under control because it was so expensive as well as wasteful. I think it would have been done before I got here, but the library recently underwent complete renovation, while staying open. The systems people were too busy running around moving computers to sites that were not being jack-hammered that day to implement the complex hardware and software solution that it has taken to charge for printing.

My small role began this summer when I was asked to code the website about printing and, therefore, be a member of the Printing Public Relations Task Force. We ended up calling the project Technology Changes Fall '06 and throwing in as many positive changes as we could, including the new IM reference (I'll write about that in another post). Along with all the members of the Task Force, I have been doing a lot of internal training and communication about the changes. And, along with the other reference librarian on the Task Force, I have been providing extra support to the front desk for problems with logging on or printing.

Today's issue of Student Life, the campus newspaper, had a front page story that got most things right. Payment for printing, for most people, won't happen via copycard as implied in the last paragraph--it will be charged to student IDs. It was obvious when I looked at the Printing FAQ page how that misunderstanding happened, so I changed the website today. The copycard was the first bullet point under "How do I pay for printing?" Tomorrow, when my correction goes live, the first bullet point will be the one that refers to the ID.

Fortunately, an editorial and a forum piece in the student newspaper were mostly positive. Angel's comment to Jane's post seems to be true on our campus: "Students do and will adapt to any measure that means less waste."

Of course, we have some students who are not happy at all--251 in a Facebook group called "I wish I could still print for free" and 21 in a group called "People Who Think It's Ridiculous to Pay for Printing on top of Tuition."

It has turned out to be a blessing, from a customer service aspect, that we were able to put off charging until October 20. Many students are happier that printing is free at this moment than they are concerned that we will be charging eventually. That gives them time to print their ERes and other needs early this semester and to begin to find other ways to cope with this change in their lives.

Labels: library insider, web development

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