Duke may have an edge against the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on the basketball court, but the Tar Heels have an edge over Duke in the computer clusters.
Duke students are printing an average of 80,000 to 105,000 pages per week in Perkins Library and Lilly Library alone, contributing to a total 6.25 million printed pages each year in the Office of Information Technology's clusters. But if the University purchased environment-friendly printers that can print on both sides of a sheet of paper, similar to those used at UNC-CH, this amount could potentially be halved.
At UNC-CH last year, 8 million pages were printed, but because of the duplex printers, only 5 million actual pieces of paper were consumed.
The special printers were implemented at UNC-CH two years ago in a bid to save paper. Although the duplex printing option adds an additional $400 cost to the printer, UNC-CH felt that curtailing paper waste was more important. "The true savings have been in saving trees," said Brent Caison, UNC-CH manager of Academic Technology and Network computer labs.
Ed Gomes, head of Library Information Services at Duke, however, does not believe that duplex printers would save that much paper. Therefore, none of the nine new printers that were installed in the e-reserves sections of Lilly and Perkins last week offered the double-sided printing option.
Gomes explained that the costs of installing special printers and extra maintenance efforts would not be the most effective way to save paper. "[The duplex printers were] taken into consideration before purchasing the [new] printers, but it wasn't something we wanted to pursue at this time," he said.
He added that double-sided printing is unpopular because the printers jam more frequently and require more attention. Unlike UNC-CH computer clusters, Duke OIT clusters are not individually staffed, and staff members would have to go to each cluster specifically to repair equipment.
"Our labs are staffed by student employees and they are available to fix the jams as they occur," Caison said. "If the Duke labs are unstaffed, it creates problems for the central staff that has to respond to the jams."
Gomes said the real reason for paper waste stems from students who are too impatient to wait for papers and repeatedly hit the print button, resulting in unnecessary extra copies. To curtail this waste, Library Information Services is currently looking at software that can monitor printing at e-reserves and restrict additional print jobs.
"We do use too much paper," Gomes said. "I am interested in seeing how UNC-CH is doing. [Double-sided printing] is something we can revisit."
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