Printing FAQ's

  1. Where can I print in the library?
  2. How does Pharos UnipriNT work?
  3. How much does printing cost?
  4. Why did I get no hits when I clicked on search?
  5. What if I select and print the wrong job by mistake?
  6. What if the print quality is poor or the printer doesn't work?
  7. Can a job released to the printer be cancelled or stopped from printing?
  8. How can I get pages from Blackboard to print properly?
  9. How can I get an Adobe PDF file to print properly from Blackboard?
  10. Why can't I print an entire article using my browser print button?
  11. How do I print JSTOR articles?
  12. How do I choose between Highest Quality Print and Economy Print?

Where can I print in the library?

A networked printing system (Pharos UnipriNT) allows you to print from any computer within the library. Currently printing is unavailable from our laptop loan machines. When you print, the printing system debits the user's Tulane ID Card or Vending Card for the cost of a print job.



How does Pharos UnipriNT work?

At a computer workstation, the user clicks on the print button. The print job will be sent to the printer specified by the print screen. (This printer number will also be on a placecard at the bottom of the computer monitor.) The print job is stored in a queue until you are ready to print it. To print the job, go to the print station and swipe your Tulane ID Card or Vending Card in the card reader. Select your print job by clicking on your print job. If you have used a login machine, your print job will be under your login name. If you have used a public machine, your print job will be under the computer number for the machine you used.



How much does printing cost?

$0.10 per page. Undergraduate students are credited with 250 ($25.00) free pages per semester.



Are there ways other than printing to capture information from computer workstations?

In many cases, computer output can be sent to an e-mail account or downloaded to a flash drive or disk. You can also save your work to your Greenspace. Go to http://greenspace.tulane.edu and login with your Tulane username and password.



What if I select and print the wrong job by mistake?

Selecting the correct print job is the user's responsibility. If you print someone else's job, your account will be debited for it.



What if the print quality is poor or the printer doesn't work?

Check with library staff for assistance. Users will be given re-prints for pages printed when the toner is low or there is a paper jam. If the printer is already printing another job, please wait until it finishes before swiping your card to send your job to the printer.



Can a job released to the printer be cancelled or stopped from printing?

No. Once a job is selected and released for printing, your account has already been debited and the print job cannot be canceled.



How can I get pages from Blackboard to print properly?

Blackboard course pages do not print easily or well because they were sometimes not designed for printing. Some of the printing techniques you might use at home to print frames or PowerPoint slides do not work on the library's public workstations.

You should consider printing PowerPoint slides from Blackboard only when the presentation is brief and only if it is really necessary to have the material in print form. Open the slides and click on the print icon on the tool bar OR right-click on the slide and then choose Print. When the print dialog window opens, click on OK to print. The printing pop-up window should then appear. You can reduce the size of PowerPoint files by only printing a few slides at a time. This will get the jobs through the print queue faster.



How can I get an Adobe PDF file to print properly from Blackboard?

Do not choose the option to "Print as image" because your print job will be incorrectly processed. Adobe PDF print jobs may print slowly especially if the file is a "scanned PDF file".



Why can't I print an entire article using my browser print button?

Your browser print button will not work to print JSTOR articles. It will only print exactly what you see on your screen, and only one page at a time. Reasons the browser print function is not used to print JSTOR page images include:

  • the quality of the image that would be printed is not as good as the printed image that results from Adobe Acrobat
  • some journals have a larger format, and the bottom or the right side of their pages would be cut off
  • because it only prints one page at a time, the browser print function is much slower


How do I print JSTOR articles?

JSTOR articles are printed with Adobe Acrobat Reader. Once you have identified an article for printing, select "Print" from the JSTOR toolbar at the left of the screen. On the next page you will be presented with the printing options, as well as options to download the helper applications. Selecting the Adobe Acrobat printing option will download a PDF version of the article which may be printed, or which may be saved and printed at a later time using Adobe Acrobat Reader. Use the printer button on the Adobe Acrobat toolbar to print.



How do I choose between Highest Quality Print and Economy Print?

Choose Highest Quality Print: if you have a high speed connection and a newer printer. Highest Quality Print provides the full 600 dots-per-inch resolution at which the page images were scanned. Pages printed at this resolution are virtually indistinguishable from a copy of the original. Highest Quality Print may take longer to download, more temporary storage space, and longer to print than Economy Print. Since the library has a high speed network connection and laser printers, Highest Quality Print will often print faster than Economy Print.

From a workstation at home you might choose Economy Print:

  • if you have a slow network connection, such as a dial-up connection
  • if you have a low-resolution printer (less than 300 DPI)
  • if you have an older printer that doesn't have the memory to handle the larger image files
  • if you want to download an Adobe Acrobat file and save it on a floppy disk

Economy Print reduces the image resolution to 150 dots-per-inch to reduce the file transmission time, temporary storage space, and printing time by up to a factor of four. When using Economy Print, image quality is reduced to approximately that of a FAX transmission. In addition, the process of reducing the image resolution can result in a longer delay before the file is downloaded and ready to print.