Until students improve their printing habits by not printing long and pointless documents, UB libraries will continue to face print delays as long as three hours or more, according to UB officials.
Although the average printer wait is about 30 minutes during high points of the day, it can be two to three hours, said Rick Lesniak, director of academic services for Computing and Information Technology.
And when are these high points?
"Anytime when the sun is up," said Kyle Jacobs, a CIT consultant in the Undergraduate Library in Capen Hall. "For large jobs it doesn't really matter, it is always long. For smaller jobs, it is usually until classes end each day."
According to Lesniak, most students fail to recognize the print delays result from their own indiscretion over what and how much they print.
Some students question why UB doesn't invest in additional printers to alleviate the printer queues.
"I don't know how many printing stations are in this university, but why are there only two printers (in Capen)?" said Elizabeth Flattery, a junior undecided major. "Maybe if they had six to eight printers, it would help."
Lesniak said UB might make that investment in the future, but first students need to improve their printing habits.
According to Lesniak, many print jobs are unnecessary, such as resubmitting print jobs because impatient students do not see their papers, or printing uncompleted documents so they can see their work in progress. At the start of the semester, so many students went to print out their class schedules that the printer delay was 16 hours, Lesniak said.
Furthermore, many students never pick up their printouts. According to Lesniak, last year students and faculty printed out about 40 million sheets of paper, and did not pick up an estimated 20 percent of those printouts.
Part of the problem, Lesniak said, is that students don't recognize that printing is not a free and unlimited service. During the last fiscal year, UB spent over $500,000 towards the costs of printing, mostly on ink and paper.
Yo Han Ku, a CIT consultant in the Science and Engineering Library who said he often sees fantasy basketball and celebrity photos being printed, agreed with Lesniak.
"Eventually, it is going to cause students to pay more. With that kind of money, we could all buy our own computer each semester with flat screens and everything else," he said, referring to the money that goes from students' comprehensive fees towards computing at UB.
According to Lesniak, a printing allocation system might be the ideal solution to the problem.
"Other universities of UB's size have developed or adopted these systems with radical results," he said. "Immediate printing costs savings in excess of 20 percent, and noticeably improved print queue times."
According to Jacobs, under such a system students would swipe their UB cards, and then their work would be the only thing to print out at that time.
In the meantime, many students have already noticed that certain printers have been designated for jobs that are 10 pages or less, and others for jobs that exceed 10 pages.
"It doesn't help too much if your one page is stuck behind 20 other items in the queue, but it does help if your one page is not stuck behind 300 pages," said Shannon Mooney, a CIT consultant in Lockwood Library.
Lesniak encouraged students to consider the necessity of the materials in their print jobs.
"I hate when I go to Lockwood and the printer delay is two days long, and everyone is printing anime cartoons," said Emily Babiarz, a sophomore physical therapy major.
If the UB community can manage to minimize waste of paper, ink and money, then CIT will be willing to invest in additional printers, Lesniak said.
"We are at our expenditure limit," he said.
