What can Print Management Software do at Your Library?
If you’ve ever printed at any library of any kind, you know how difficult it can be for patrons and library staff alike. Printing is a big deal at the library—a VERY big deal. It isn’t a two second job. You may even have to pay a very small (usually about a dime, maybe a little more) fee. This isn’t such a bad thing—just not everyone carries money to the library. Normally, you don’t expect to find anything to buy there except maybe a drink that you can’t drink by the computers anyways.
But at the same time, finding your papers when they finally do print can be a hassle. It’s not the staff member’s fault—if they have ten papers going through from ten different people, it might take them a minute or two to figure out what paper is yours. Which is one of the ways that print management software can help them.
Say that they already had print management software. They’d also have print tracking and be able to see who was printing at what time and which printer it went to. They can also see which computer your paper was printed from. So finding your paper could be as easy as saying “I printed from computer 19. The paper is about chinchillas and it was about ten minutes ago.” The staff person could check their print log and see how many papers were printed between now and that time, rifle through them real quick and voila. There’s your paper. Print tracking can also give them a better idea of which printer takes the most abuse throughout the day and might wear out the fastest.
Then there’s another issue. Maybe your library wants to stop charging for every single paper—because, as stated before, not everyone has a dime or quarter on them at the library. Then they could enable a print quota for each person with a library card that uses the computers. With the print quota, they are able to print a certain amount of papers without the library staff interfering or having to do anything special. If what they are printing exceeds their print quota, then they can simply ask the staff member to authorize their remaining papers. Easy as that and all you needed was print management software.
About PrintLimit® LLC
PrintLimit® LLC provides easy-to-use print management software that allows you to monitor all printing activities, handle charge-backs, control who is printing, how much is being printed, and identify the cost of printing across your entire organization.
