[CALIBK12] Print Management Dilemma

[Darla Brown]

Sarah: When I arrived at the high school library where I now teach, I was so impressed with their system. All library computer workstations are connected to one heavy-duty b&w printer and one color printer--which are on a counter BEHIND THE CIRC DESK. To retrieve their printing, students must come to the circ desk and pay me (we charge $.10/b&w page and $.25/color page) before I give them their work. I have a fully stocked change box. I do not take IOUs--kids who don't have enough money borrow from their friends.

I see everything that comes out of the printer. If a student is printing non-school-related stuff, I remind them of the rules, but make them pay for all pages anyway. If a student makes a mistake and prints out 10 pages instead of the intended 1, they also pay for all pages (I have a re-cycling basket on the floor near the printer for the "mistakes").

As for the "law" re: charging for printing, I don't know. We are a private school, so we're different in that respect. But I do know that this school year--with $ from printing and our coin-operated copier (also $.10/page), we collected over $1500. With our administration's permission, I used this money for a new color printer and a new portable barcode scanner--both for the library.

Good luck with your dilemma (& e me if you'd like more details...)

Mrs. Darla Brown, Teacher Librarian
Garces Memorial High School
Bakersfield, CA
________________________________
From: calibk12-bounces at lists.sjsu.edu [calibk12-bounces at lists.sjsu.edu] On Behalf Of Sarah Bosler [daydream.queen at gmail.com]
Sent: Friday, May 15, 2009 8:15 AM
To: CALIBk12
Subject: [CALIBK12] Print Management Dilemma

OK Thanks to all who have sent me info on print management systems in the past. Due to problems with kids printing too much unnecessary, non-school related, or excessive (25 pages of a Wikipedia article) printing, I have resolved to figure out a way to cut down on printing.

Our paper is paid for by Title I and black and white printing is free for students. I am under the impression that I cannot charge for printing, especially if it's paid for by Title I.In general I always instruct classes who come in for research to either email links/articles to themselves or copy and paste pieces they need to a Word doc. I also remind students that they should only be printing school-related things. We get very busy after school so it's very hard to manage this (about 150 kids come to our tutoring program after school each day on average)
I tried to set up trials for PCounter and VendPrint and both not only required lots of time and mental gymnastics from my site IT guy but also I found were not very user friendly on the admin end. Teachers have a lot of restrictions at my site on installing programs, etc. In the end all these programs would do is give students an allotment of prints and let them know with a popup how many pages are printing. (Not much for how pricy these programs are!)

SO, I'd like your advice. How do you manage printing? What are the legal issues involved in charging for printing? If I buy my own paper with library monies I imagine I could charge. Do you require copy/paste to Word, do you allow printing from the web? (I'd hate to restrict that)

All I know is that we have exhausted our entire year's worth of paper twice this year and much of it is getting wasted. Help!

Thanks for listening...I'd love to hear your solutions.


--
Sarah Bosler, Teacher Librarian
Chaffey Joint Union High School District
Montclair High School
4725 Benito Street
Montclair, CA 91791
909-621-6781 Ext. 2065
http://mohigh.com
http://mohigh.weebly.com

"Well-behaved women rarely make history" - Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
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