Monday, April 23, 2007

Printing is not actually “free”

On Friday, our systems librarian, David Robinson, posted this comment to a blog post about conserving printer paper. He made some very good points, so I wanted to put it in its own post:

“Contrary to popular belief, and as mistakenly stated in the blog above, printing in University labs is not “free”. Printing is subsidized by a portion of a $100 Technology Access Fee (TAF) that each student pays each semester. The TAF helps to fund the lab, but does not cover everything. About 35% of the cost of printing comes out of the Library’s budget. That means, that your decision to print that Powerpoint presentation, rather than viewing it online, may be the factor that prevents the Library from buying a book that can be used over and over again. Last year, over 6,500,000 pages were printed in the Library. Something to think about.”

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