Uniprint system decreases printer use
John Dougherty
Issue date: 2/8/05 Section: News
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Despite rumors that the school is planning on using the system to charge for printing, the devices -- which require that you swipe your Evergreen card to release a print job -- are used merely for tracking purposes. Although the school is debating what to do with the information, there are currently no plans to institute a fee.
"Of course they're going to charge, it's Loyola," junior Alexis Turro said. She said that she recently returned from abroad, and at first thought that she was being charged to print. The balance of a student's Evergreen card shows up on the screen when they release a print job.
According to Tom Podles, computing services director for Technology Services, the information gathered through Uniprint has allowed his department to track which students are doing the most printing and the sizes of their print jobs, rather than just the amount of printing done.
"I could get data before, but I'd never be able to tell who the students were or how many pages they printed," he said.
Podles said that the printing being done before was unevenly distributed among the students. When the system was first installed, six percent of the students did about 30 percent of the printing.
Out of the 2,210 students who used the system on the average month last semester, four students printed over 1,000 pages of paper, and 130 people printed over 300, including a single print job of 350 pages.
"The question is what's fair use, what's legitimate use. That is someone else's decision to make; my job is just to collect the numbers," Podles said.
Since then, the numbers have evened out. In January, there were 1,497 students who used the printers; only 34 printed over 300 pages.