We’re sorry for your frustration with the printers. The printers frustrate us, too. Please know that we’re trying to identify feasible solutions and hoping to find improvements. Here are some of the reasons why the printers break down, and some of the things we’re trying to do to help.

Wear and tear

The more you drive a car, the sooner you expect to bring it to the mechanic, right? Library users send millions of pages through our printers. And within the library, most jobs go to the printers on the main level. So, just two printers handle a huge number of print jobs. To reduce the wear and tear on these two printers, we are considering not setting a default printer, or evenly distributing the default printer assignments throughout the library.

Aging equipment

Remember when the price of a postage stamp jumped to 39 cents in 2006? We don’t either, and that’s how long ago some of our printers were purchased. We’re hoping to get newer printers in February. The “problem” with a new printer is that it…works! As a result, it gets overused. We’re hoping that new printers will allow us to implement a feature of the print release stations that allows people to redirect print jobs from one printer to another when there are malfunctions, long lines or long print jobs.

Even now, you can look for a working printer before you send off your print job. This is a new development! Visit go/findaprinter and click on the printer icon for the nearest location. If the printer there is working fine, the word “Ready” will appear. If there’s a problem, the word “Error” will appear in red.

Types of documents being printed

It’s not just the large amount of prints, but also the type of documents being printed. While we do have high-volume printers, they are designed to continuously print hundreds of pages. Printing 10-20 pages, stopping, starting again, stopping again – this process breaks down the mechanism that lifts and moves the paper. The new Kyocera printers are supposed to be better at dealing with our use patterns, but it’s hard to tell if they actually are. Again, whenever a new (read: working) printer is installed, it gets used a lot, and as a result it breaks down.

Furthermore, we all know that the printer is a frequent target for e-reserves readings. Many e-res documents are PDFs, and these are pictures of text, not simple text. The printer needs to work really hard when it processes pictures, and this can cause heat damage to the parts that disperse and fuse the toner. There are no easy solutions here. The most obvious option is to not print e-res documents. Aren’t they supposed to be electronic readings? Other options include an OCR (Optical Character Recognition) scanning process where we actually try to convert the pictures into text, but this is error-prone and does not work well even for English. Another potential option is selling e-res documents at the bookstore….

Who’s trying to fix the printers?

Another issue is the fact that many people are tempted to load paper and try to fix printer jams themselves rather than asking at the Helpdesk. This can cause more damage. Since we have lots of printers scattered across campus, and it’s physically impossible for Helpdesk staff to be in all places at all times, this type of damage is bound to continue. We’ve considered consolidating and having larger print centers in fewer buildings. This would make it easier for Helpdesk staff to check on printers more regularly.

Is the printer really broken???

Many breakdowns are not breakdowns at all. When folks see a flashing red light, for instance, they sometimes move on rather than contacting the Helpdesk. Sometimes the printer could have been “fixed” quickly if the Helpdesk were notified – sometimes it just needs more paper, or it’s looking for a non-standard paper size, or it’s waiting for someone to add paper to the manual feed tray. Sometimes a printer stops working because someone has stolen the ethernet cable.

What have we been doing to improve the situation?

In addition to all we have described above,

-We’ve replaced one troublesome printer on the main level.
-We’ve posted a stop/go sign in the atrium that indicates which printers are up (green) or down (red).
-We perform printer rounds every night and periodically check them throughout the day.
-Of course, if someone tells us that a printer isn’t working (pleeease, tell us!!!), we’ll check on it then too.

Performance may be faster if you use midd_secure, as we have more bandwidth/infrastructure in place for it. The network architecture that allows unsecured anonymous midd_unplugged users to get to the Internet without unfettered access to campus resources creates a potential bottleneck during heavy use. Midd_unplugged was intended for guests only; we’d prefer that our students, faculty, and staff use the more secure network.

For best performance, plug in to an ethernet jack. That way, you’ll get a dedicated 100M rather than a fraction of a 10M link.

We’d like to improve the performance of our wireless, and we will continue to work aggressively to identify and resolve weak signal areas, insufficient capacity, etc. The library is a large, complex environment with reflections and shadows. If people can help us identify dim spots, we can light them up.

So, select midd_secure or use ethernet jacks, and tell us if you know of an area that seems to have a weak signal. We’ll look into it. And hopefully, you won’t have to wait several minutes for a page to load again.

I’m happy to tell you that this will be possible. In fact, the Kyocera printer that was purchased for LIB242 was selected because it would allow jobs to be moved from one printer to another.

This option will be available for the two Kyocera printers on the main level once the HelpDesk has time to test, configure and prepare staff and researchers for the new setup.

This option will be available on other printers after their leases expire and we switch them out for similar Kyocera models. The functionality requires machines that can utilize the same print driver.

Best,

Carrie

Thanks for your suggestion. We’ll check to see if this might be possible. We might not be able to answer immediately, but we’ll get back to you as soon as we can.

Stay tuned,

Carrie

Thanks for sharing this good suggestion. We’re now looking into providing an alternative method for contacting the HelpDesk. We also are committed to creating a ticketing system where people can log in to track the status of a request. That will be further down the road, though. For now, please feel welcome to call (443-2200), visit, or email (helpdesk@middlebury.edu) from your non-Midd account.