In the Cybrary on the second floor of Lockwood Library, students are learning how to use UB's new print allocation system while administrators work out the kinks in preparation for expanding it campus-wide in August.
When the new iPrint program is completely installed in every computer lab and library on campus, it will limit each UB student, faculty and staff member to print 650 pages per semester. In additional 200 pages will be allotted during the summer session, and additional pages come with a per-page cost.
However, this spring, while still in its trial period, printing in the Lockwood Cybrary and other libraries on campus is still free while users learn to navigate the new program and its software.
"We need time to figure out if there are any bugs, and get a feel for how the system operates under load before we started with the allocations," said Rick Lesniak, director of Academic Services for CIT.
The iPrint program, which has suffered from multiple technical delays, is now scheduled to be up and running in its entirety in time for the fall 2006 semester.
Besides finding and removing any remaining technical bugs, another major goal of the iPrint test run is to get students and faculty acclimated to the new printing procedure in the libraries. Before printing, students now have to additionally log in again with a UBIT name and password, and then confirm the printout.
And when the program is up and running, students who max-out their limits will have to go another print terminal to get extra copies.
Ming Fang, an industrial engineering graduate student, said that the new program is "pretty cool," but that at first he had some trouble using it.
"Once you get used to it, it's more convenient," he said.
With iPrint in place, the average wait time for printed documents has been only about one hour - a wait time that senior American studies major Elizabeth Mariani said she's pleased with. Her problem, however, is that sometimes it doesn't print for her at all.
"Sometimes it prints, sometimes it doesn't," Mariani said.
Luckily for students stuck with missing print jobs like Mariani, the staff at the Lockwood Cybrary is equipped to help.
According to Rohan Thadani, a freshman and a Lockwood Cybrary public site counselor, the library print staff can reprint a user's lost job, and it will print faster than the wait time.
As some students are already getting used to iPrint, others are expressing dissatisfaction with its possible impact on fall classes, with some professors relying heavily on required materials that need to be printed from UBLearns.
Lesniak said that Academic Services will directly communicate with professors to remind them of the new campus-wide efforts to prevent printing waste, and of the limitations put on students' free printing privileges. As for the future of iPrint, he has high hopes for increased efficiency and shorter wait times.
"We're also expecting that with iPrint in place that we can install bigger, high-capacity printers. We have a 30-minute maximum as a service goal for people to have to wait for their printouts."
Photo: Courtesy of Matthew Messina, from the RMBERS' Instagram page
