We encourage you to contact us with any questions or concerns.
Burke Library - 3rd Floor
helpdesk@hamilton.edu
859-4181
859-4185 - fax
Frequently Asked Questions
Background History
After a successful pilot of the print management system during the fall 2011 semester, PaperCut became fully operational on January 17, 2011. Quotas are as follows (and are restarted each semester):
Seniors - $70
Juniors - $65
Sophomores - $45
First years - $30
Charges for printing remain as follows:
Black and white printing will cost .05 for single-sided printing
Black and white printing will cost .07 for two-sided duplex printing (a discount of 30%)
Color printing will cost .15/side.
Student organizations that have access to printing will have their quotas set at $25. Requests for additions to student organization quotas are made to Noelle Niznik in the Student Activities Office. Students who work for faculty and have substantial printing as part of their job will be able to obtain (top-up) cards to increase their quotas from their faculty supervisor. A note has been sent to all faculty members.
Any students with special needs should contact Dave Smallen (dsmallen) for adjustments to their quotas.
Beginning in fall 2011, when students have gone through their provided free print quota, they'll be able to add money to their PaperCut accounts directly from their Hill Cards on their PaperCut account details page.
PaperCut lets you view the history of things you printed and displays various details about the printouts. Your print usage is summarized in graphical form with approximations of environmental impact. Any questions about how to access your PaperCut account, see your balance, or add money to your quota can be answered by the ITS Lab Consultants, located on the first floor of the Burke Library.
Answers to some frequently asked questions appear below.
Can be done in one of two ways:
Can be done in one of two ways:
In 2008-2009, the faculty Committee on Information Technology recommended that we investigate systems for managing printing on campus to help reduce perceived paper waste (save trees), reduce Hamilton’s carbon footprint and reduce energy consumption. A task force was set up including faculty, representatives of the library, ITS and students to evaluate alternatives. In the summer of 2009 PaperCut™ was selected and a pilot use of the product was conducted during the spring 2010 semester in all the ITS computer labs. The purpose was to gather data on usage and to test out the user interface.
At the same time we surveyed our peer institutions about the quota systems they used. We set the initial quotas based on the 90th percentile of usage in spring 2010. That is, 90% of the students in each class year would be able to do all the printing without exceeding the quota. This was the methodology used by most of our peers and it turns out that Hamilton’s quotas are higher than those of our peers.
Most academic departments also asked us to restrict access to their department printers to only faculty and staff in the departments. This was also implemented using PaperCut.
In the fall 2010, Hamilton implemented a system called PaperCut™ for managing laser printing on campus. This builds on a pilot project done last year (see below for the three year history of this project that was initiated by the faculty Committee on Information Technology). The ultimate goal of this project is to save institutional resources (by reducing Hamilton’s carbon footprint, saving trees and reducing energy consumption) without adversely affecting the academic program.
Using PaperCut, students are assigned a quota limit for free printing ranging from approximately 850/sides/semester for first year students to 2000/sides/semester for seniors.
For the fall 2010 we tried out all the elements of the system. Students were not be charged if they went over their quota. At the end of the semester we studied the data for students who exceeded their quotas to determine if adjustments needed to be made based on their academic programs. The system became fully operational for the start of spring 2011 semester.
