LIBRARY LOGGED: Printers…

Printers Suck!

One of the library’s main functions is to provide working printers that operate on a consistent basis.  This is often not the case.  The directions offered on the console for self-repair and management are often hard to follow and ineffectual.  Work study employees infrequently seem to know how to fix the problem.  I suggest that the library hire, train or borrow a Technology Services technician who does know how to deal this this issue.  Students would be happier and they might even have recourse to recycling single-sided paper if only the printers worked enough to allow this.

We understand that the printers can be frustrating and problematic at times.  It is most helpful for us to address these problems if we are alerted to them at the time they are happening and which specific printer is experiencing the problem.

While printing is available in the library, ultimately, the printers fall under the purview of Technology Services.  The library staff do all they can to fix printer issues, but some problems are beyond our capabilities.  Many printer problems do not lie with the actual printer but perhaps with the print server.   In these instances, it requires Technology Services to address the problem from the server level.   In other instances, the problem lies with the print job being sent to the printer.  This was the center of the problem with the laptop printers in the library Reading Room several weeks ago.  Essentially, there were “bad” (for lack of a better word) print jobs sent to the printer.  This resulted in a vague error message and prompted the user to turn the printer off and on again to cancel the current print job causing the error.   If an individual continued to send problematic print jobs, not realizing they were the source of the error, it would just cause the error to continue.  In this case, it is a matter of extreme patience to continue to cancel the problematic prints and encourage library users to re-install the laptop printers with the updated instructions that will prevent this from occurring in the future.

Technology Services is working on campus-wide changes to printing that should alleviate many problems experienced in the past.

This entry was posted in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *