Printing@SCSU

Students and faculty who have been away for the summer may have missed the fact that SCSU is now charging for printing in the public computer labs, including the main floor of the library. The cost is $.05/page (black and white, single sided) on your HootLoot ID card only.

Students who rarely visit campus should make an extra effort to bring your ID card if you have one. If you don't have one and want one, you can visit the Card Office in Wintergreen during their business hours. Online students can get a non-picture card by emailing the Card Office (see the Note: Online Students). If you don't have an ID and can't get one in time, or lose yours, you can buy a copy card and use that for printing. Copy cards are $5, and you get $4 worth of copies/printing. (The photocopiers are $.11/page.) There is a card machine in the library by the Reference Desk; you can buy a card and put money on an old card or an ID card. You can also put money on an ID card (not a purchased copy card) via the Card Office website.

It's probably an even better idea to bring a USB "thumb" drive to the library. You can save all your articles, documents, etc., to the drive and print them elsewhere if the printers are down, card machine is down or out of cards, etc. You can scan printed items instead of photocopying. No online student should be without a USB drive these days. And they have gotten a lot cheaper. Staples had them at the check out counters for $10 for 2G, and I've seen $10 for 4G and $20 for 8G ones on sale. They are usable across platforms (Mac, Windows, Linux) and you can even load programs onto them. If you visit another library, they may be your best bet for getting articles, since you may not be able to get printing privileges.

Or you could go the all-online route. You can email PDFs and other files to a Gmail or other large capacity email account. You could use Google Docs, Zoho Docs, or your Owls Microsoft Online Office and Sky Drive to hold documents you are working on. Mendeley will store PDFs of articles and help you organize and cite your sources. I've used Drop.io to "send" myself files that are too big to email. Links to sites you want to look at later could be stored in Delicious, Evernote, or a similiar system, and Evernote lets you store pictures and add text notes, too.

So, don't let me hear that you've come a long way to visit the campus library, and left without what you needed because you "couldn't print"!