There are several major items on the Public Printing to-do list.  I’d like to provide an overview of the issues, and address the timeline for implementation.

Print Billing

While billing has continued as usual for the legacy LibPrint system, we still have not issued charges for anyone printing to PaperCut.  PaperCut has been in use at the Undergraduate Library since spring break 2012, and was rolled out to all locations over the summer and during the early part of the fall semester.  Due to the delay in submitting charges, and as an acknowledgement of some of the transition difficulties we’ve had, the Library has decided not to charge for any PaperCut printing that occurred before August 15 of this year.

Patrons will see a credit for their printing up to August 15 in their Transaction History, http://libprintserv1.library.illinois.edu/user (please note, you must be on campus or using the VPN to access this site).  The credit will be applied at some point next week, after which bills will be sent to OBFS for print charges accrued from August 16 on.  Subsequent bills will be generated every two weeks, and sent to OBFS for collection.

Printer Problem Alerts

At present, PaperCut can only generate problem alerts, such as low toner, out of paper, or paper jam problems, through email.  At most of our locations, it would be cumbersome to rely on email to fix common printing problems. We have decided that the simplest path forward is to slightly retool the LibPrint printer pop-up alert system.  Once updated, the PPA system will pop up printer error messages on staff workstations.

The PPA system has been in continuous use throughout the public printing migration, but it has not been functioning as expected for several reasons.  Getting the alert system running will require some code updates on the server-side, and installation of PPA clients on some staff workstations.  We plan to also offer training on addressing common printer problems, such as stalled jobs or print jobs that have generated printer errors.

Incremental progress will be made on the PPA system between now and December.  We expect full deployment, including staff and student training, to be complete before December 1.

Laptop Printing

The most requested public printing feature, by a very wide margin, is laptop printing.  We have held off on allowing laptop printing for a number of process-related reasons, which I won’t elaborate on here.  The simplest way to think about it is to consider the current public printing environment.  Think about the confusion many of our patrons – and staff – have experienced as we make the transition to PaperCut.  People have been asked to rethink how they submit, release, and claim their print jobs.  How much more difficulty would we encounter if we added that people can also print from any mobile device, not just from the controlled setup we have on the public workstations?

Now that most of the kinks have been worked out of the public workstation environment, we are beginning to consider how to support laptop and mobile device printing.  We have a plan in place, but it will take some time to set everything up.  We expect to fully support laptop printing before the start of spring semester 2013, although printing from mobile devices (for example, iPads, Android phones, etc.) may not be available right away.