Printing in the Rutherford Building (RB)

Printing

The RB uses a printing system called PCounter for black and white and colour printing on both PC and Macintosh systems. PCounter PrintStations are located in various parts of the RB. When you print a document from a computer in the RB you can use any of the PrintStations to print it.

Our computer systems are set by default to print in black and white duplex (double-sided) for environmental reasons. Students can however easily set a particular job to print single-sided if required by their department for particular pieces of coursework (PhD and MPhil theses fall into this category). Colour printing can also be selected as required by changing the printer selection.

To print, you must have funds in your PCounter account, and your balance is reduced for each print you make:

A4 printing costs 4p per sheet
A3 printing costs 8p per sheet

Funds can be added to your PCounter account using the Value Loaders located on the Ground floor of the RB, near the Copy Centre. These accept coins only, not bank notes or credit/debit cards.

The PCounter PrintStations are located on the First Floor and Ground Floor in open areas not used for teaching, and are therefore always available. There are no printers in the Teaching Rooms.

Please note: You cannot print without your Goldsmiths ID Card.

Full details of PCounter are provided in IT Services Guide A8.1 Printing in the RB.

Printing Course Materials

IT Services facilities are not intended for the printing of course materials. Tutors must not ask entire classes to use the RB facilities to print out departmental course materials or on-line resources without the prior agreement of the Director of Information Technology:

All printing is deducted from the individual student's print credits, and the printing of course materials will be paid for by the student
Such requests pose an additional burden on printing facilities and on the IT Services Help Desk.
Single-sided laser printing is wasteful in both economic and environmental terms compared to the double-sided printing available from the Reprographic Unit.
Web pages often print poorly, with results partly dependent on the browser and its settings.

Where the Director of Information Technology agrees to permit the printing of course materials, students must be warned that the printing will be paid for from their own print credits.

Reducing your Printing

There are a number of ways to economise on your printing:

It is not necessary to print every draft of a piece of work. When printing a draft, you can save by printing two pages on a single sheet - see the Zoom/Pages per sheet option in Word’s Print dialog.
Reprinting a whole essay because of minor corrections to one or two pages is expensive and wasteful - use the Page Range option in Word’s Print dialog to reprint just the pages which have changed. Minor last-minute corrections can also be made by hand!
Printing e-mail messages is something you should not need to do as a matter of course. The College's E-mail Policy for Students specifically prohibits printing copies of personal e-mail messages, not related to your studies, in the RB.
Printing on-line materials is usually not necessary. In any case, web pages often print very poorly and in a way that is wasteful of paper.

Further advice is given in IT Services Guide A8.5 Saving Paper. Economical Printing in the RB.

Problems

In general any problems with printing or with an individual printer should be reported to the IT Services Help Desk.

However, users may:

Replenish empty paper trays from the stocks - but please take care when doing so.

But users must not:

Attempt to clear paper jams
Remove or interfere with toner cartridges