"Pay for Printing --- Should We?" Olga Verbeek, Salve Regina University
March 2000

The "Pay for Printing" Quandary

Our university has started using a "one card" (a combined student identity, debit, dorm key, library card). Central Connecticut State University (CCSU) in New Britain, CT, has the same system, and we were invited for a visit to their campus to see what types of services can be included in the "one card" system. In particular, I was interested in seeing the "pay for printing" system. More importantly, I was wondering if it worked! Two years ago, when I was a library school student at the University of Rhode Island and worked in the reference department of the library, I had the terrible experience of having to deal with a "pay for printing" system that was down more often than it was up and running. The good news is that CCSU is very happy with their "pay for printing" system. Initially, the university had provided a printing credit on the patron's "one card." When the printing credit was used up, printing was charged at $0.10 per page. Patrons had no problems in adapting to the "pay for printing" concept, maybe because of the incentive of the initial printing credit. The amount of printing done by patrons has decreased dramatically and has resulted in huge savings for the university in paper and cartridge costs. The printers are used less frequently thus extending their lifetimes.

Although the economic benefits are clear, the dilemma of whether libraries should be charging for printing at all in the library is not so easy to resolve. As the library provides more electronic and web resources, often at the expense of physical materials, charging for printing may be seen as a way to restrict a patron's access to free information. Then there is the need to deal with issues such as consortium agreements, providing access for consortium patrons, and providing access for special library patrons who are not part of the university/college community.

There are other issues that need to be considered. When "pay for printing" is implemented, it will need to be campus-wide as any "free" printer is sure to be mobbed. What happens if the "pay for printing" system is down? Does the campus general fund collect the money? How is this money returned to the library to recover the printing costs (Yue, 2000)? Should the administration, as in the case of CCSU, give an allotted amount of "free" printing as part of their tuition fees? How much should be charged? Rates among libraries range from $0.05 to $0.15 per page with $0.10 being the most frequent charge. Each institution will need to answer these questions. If your institution has not already implemented "pay for printing" it may in the near future. The number of institutions charging for printing is steadily increasing (Shaw, 1999).

Setting Up a "Pay for Printing" System

Many solutions are available and I have listed some of the various systems at the end of this article. Which type of "pay for printing" system the institution chooses will depend on how it ties into the campus accounting system.

Most "pay for printing" systems work in the following manner. A print job is initiated by a user from any of a number of applications. The "pay for printing" system, instead of the local printing system, steps in to handle the printing. Depending on the system used, the user will be prompted for various information. Nearly all systems will ask the user to give a name and password to the print job for later identification and retrieval, identify which printer to send the job, and give particulars on payment. After the accounting system has verified the transaction and the user has prompted the system that he/she is ready to pick up the print job, the job is sent to the appropriate printer.

Typically, to support the "pay for printing" system, the institution will need a computer that is the printer server. Our institution is planning on one print server for all the public printers on campus including the library, computer labs, and residence printers. The print server will queue the print jobs for the various printers. It will also remove print jobs that have not been retrieved after a specified time limit. We plan to allow print jobs to remain in the queue for one hour before cancelling them. The supervisor of the computer labs and I are requesting that the server be physically located in the library building, as the building houses both the library and the majority of the computer labs. This building is also open for business many more hours than our campus technology department. Hopefully this will enable keeping down time to a minimum.

At each printer there will be a computer that patrons will use to retrieve their print jobs. The computer will indicate the print jobs ready for printing. A menu-style program prompts the retrieving and paying of the print job. Usually an older computer may be used as this is all it has to do. There may be a card reader or coin machine to complete the payment transaction.

Our institution plans to buy Pharos UnipriNT. It reportedly works well with the institution's "one card" system. UnipriNT has acquired a reputation for being very reliable and has been sucessfully implemented in many libraries (Shaw, 1999). I recommend this very informative white paper on the UnipriNT system.

Personally, I am concerned that "pay for printing" is the trend in so many libraries. I think that the overhead in new systems, maintenance and needed patron support to make the "pay for printing" system work sucessfully is more costly than the numbers suggest. Also, on the one hand we have made information accessible at our patron's fingertips by figuratively removing the walls of the physical library and on the other hand we have taken the access away by erecting a "pay for it" barrier instead.

Further Connections...

Pharos UnipriNT
The Cheshire/Crellin Macintosh Print Accounting Package
SAPS Laserprinter Charging System
Cornell's Net-Print
Printer Accounting Server (PAS) 2.0.
Giles Riesner's Do-It-Yourself System

Resources Used

Shaw, Beth Hansen. Managing Electronic Resources: A Survey of Current Practices in Academic Libraries http://www.govst.edu/library/mer.htm Accessed: Feb. 7, 2000.

Yue, Joseph. Who Pays for Printing? ALA Cognotes from ALA Midwinter Meeting, San Antonio, January 15-17, 2000. Wrapup, p.18.

Olga Verbeek
Information Systems Librarian
McKillop Library
Salve Regina University
Newport, RI 02840
verbeeko@salve.edu
Comments Welcome!