cogscilibrarian writes “Vivian Conan, a librarian in suburban NYC has an op-ed piece in The New York Times saying that ‘Library users shouldn’t have to pay to print from the web.’ She argues that in the olden days, patrons could spend all the time they wanted with library resources, but now many are limited to 30- or 60-minute sessions at computer terminals. What is the implication if they also can’t afford to print their material?”
cogscilibrarian writes “Vivian Conan, a librarian in suburban NYC has an op-ed piece in The New York Times saying that ‘Library users shouldn’t have to pay to print from the web.’ She argues that in the olden days, patrons could spend all the time they wanted with library resources, but now many are limited to 30- or 60-minute sessions at computer terminals. What is the implication if they also can’t afford to print their material?”Or a computer and Internet connection to access electronic holdings from home. With government documents going online as well as the growth of electronic subscriptions, printing costs are being transferred to users. Most libraries have at-cost printing charges to stave off abuse (think of the Kinko’s subcontracting you could do with free printing). Some campuses offer students a free number of copies per term. But the money’s got to come from somewhere.
Preaching to the choir
To play devil’s advocate…
We just put in ten new public access computers, with an hour limit on six, and twenty minutes on four. There is a line to use them now, a week later, the entire time we’re open. I fully believe we could put in one hundred computers and have the same problem… There’s just no way in god’s green earth any library, with any sort of budget, can keep up.
As for printing… The example the author uses… Well… The patron could have the article in print all day, true. But if she wanted to take it home, she’d have to copy it on a photocopier. I wasn’t around when photocopiers hit the scene in libraries, but I know I’ve never been in a library that’s had a free one. Never. Because they are maintained by outside vendors, usually.
How I feel:
I, too, feel bad when people need to print something and don’t have the cash. But I refuse to feel guilty about it. Why? I feel worse that we don’t have the cash to buy paper and ink for these sorts of things for the community.
I feel worse when people from wealthy communities come into my library, go to print something off, and tell me, “My town library does it for free!” I want to say, “You live two towns over. Go to their library and print it, for the love of jessup!”
I think the key is getting patrons to understand why we charge. We try to explain it to patrons… We’re not doing this to make money off you. We’re doing it to recoup costs. Libraries generally don’t rake in the dough.
Ideally, I’d love a library where we didn’t have to have time limits on the computers or charge for printing (and where people turned off their cell phones, and kids didn’t pull books off the shelves and throw them on the floor, and…) but I’d also like my home to be self cleaning and world peace to be attainable tomorrow. I just don’t think there’s enough money for that, and for other services the library, and the city as a whole needs to offer to stay functional.
Not a library, but a university computer lab…
I used to run one of the computer labs at when I was at college. We hadn’t (yet) put any usage scheduling software into effect, and all printing was free. We had posted policies about appropriate uses, but at least once a month I’d cancel an egregious print job. The worst I can remember was 450 copies (he thought he was being clever by going *just* less than a ream) of a take-out menu for a local restaurant.
Unfortunately it took about two and a half years to get a reasonable scheduling and print-billing system installed. I saw plenty of that kind of abuse of the commons during the intervenging time.
First 25 prints free
This would vary library to library depending on the system they used to keep track of prints but it might work to give every user 25 free prints. There would just need to be a system in place to show who has gotten their free prints and how many they had used. This is still not a perfect solution but it would control the problem of people that would abuse the free prints becuase there is a cap and for people that truly don’t have any money they could at least get a few articles without having to pay.
The problem with free printing
I work at a small college library. We have a printer in our Information Commons that offers free copies for everyone. It sounds great… no one is denied access to information either in print or paper… and it would be great, except for the abuse.
It’s not a little abuse. It’s rampant. In one year, that printer has printed 600,000 pages! And that is only one of the printers that provides free copies to all the students at the college. We are getting killed on the paper and toner… not to mention the parts that are breaking down. I shudder to think how many free pages must have been across the college on all the other printers!
Needless to say, since I joined the college a few months ago, I have made it a priority to work with the ITS dept to find a way to control printing. I was very happy to discover that we can limit students/patrons to a set number of free prints… after which they will have to pay. It’s the only reasonable solution I can see. In these days of shrinking budgets… who could possibly support 600,000 pages of printing on a single printer for a population of less than 1500?
The problem with expecting people to use their common sense and not abuse free printing… is that no one wants to be common!
limited free
A public library could do a version of what mu Uni does, offering a limited number of free copies ( a day, a month, whatever ). Tie it to library card run through a print server. Easy enough; my uni already does it. If you keep it to say, 10 pages a day — and you put up signs saying “ask for help if you’re printing a web page or it will print 15 pages of garbage around your content” — then you won’t be wasting the reams and reams of garbage that people print.
Re:Preaching to the choir
Years ago, when I was the summer intern here, our county administration decreed that the library would charge for photocopying the same as every other county department: 15 cents a copy. We actually had to function without a photocopier for a couple of week during the transition period to the new contract. Later, they started allowing Internet and other printing at a penny a page. This was completely unworkable, as we were getting eaten alive by printing costs. All printing was set at $0.15. This later became a problem because we had to get special dispensation to charge more for color printing (which was costing us around double what we were charging). Eventually that got worked out as well. But we had still issues with people printing endlessly and never paying for or even picking up their print jobs. First, LPT:One and now PAMS had helped us manage that. Free printing is not a fundamental library service that I ever learned of.
There is no such thing as free
It is theoretically nice to have free printing. However, when it is free, there tends to be abuse, misuse and overuse. And expectations become unreal or unreasonable. For example, 500 pages are printed and they expect that for free. Therefore, unfortunately a user-pay system has to be in place to encourage responsible use. Anyway there is no such as free things in life. The public phone or the photocopier is not free, so why should printing be free?
reading what you print
What bothers me is when people print things they don’t end up reading.
But, as a society, we are expecting people to print more on their own. For example, our university has dramatically increased the number of online courses. Rather than attend a lecture and take notes, the students are expected to go into a system called WebCT and print off the entire lecture. In fact, I believe that the online teachers include more material than they would have time to lecture in a normal class period.
Or take the IRS, everyone’s favorite government institution. They hope everyone will file taxes online, but they expect you to print off copies for your records.
At my university we allow “free” printing for all students, because they pay a library fee every semester, but charge “guests” ten cents a side of a page. The guest printing is set up so it won’t print off until they pay. The “guests” rarely pay to print.
I would be fine with everyone getting free printing as long as they were reading all the words and becoming avid readers. But I suspect that people who are avid readers print off less stuff than others. The ideal patron for me loves information in any form, and wants to read it.