[Web4lib] Re: managing colour printing by the public

[Diana Myers Hyatt]

Hi John,
Just a comment on the colors of the toner -- cyan, magenta, yellow and black -- or CMYK as it's known in printers circles. Any color printing will usually involve all four colors, which combine to create all possible colors on the printer. Except for black, patrons will not be printing just magenta, cyan or yellow, unless they're making color separations.

Diana Myers Hyatt
Riverside Public Library

John Fitzgibbon wrote:

> Hi,
>  
> We have received a grant from the government to install colour laser
> printers on the networks for the public. In our libraries, we charge 
for
> printing. Heretofore, we only provided black and white copies. Now 
that
> we have the option of colour the issue of charging different rates
> arises. The colour printer uses four toners (cyan, magenta, yellow, 
and
> black) whereas the black and white printer uses one toner. This
> presumably will not quadruple the cost.  Few colours will require the
> use of all four toners and four popular colours require only one 
toner.
> We are thinking of charging three times as much for a colour copy as 
for
> a black and white copy. Are our assumptions correct? Does colour
> printing cost approximately three times as much as black and white
> printing? We are only interested in recovering the cost of printing, 
not
> the cost of the printer.
>  
> Secondly, when a user clicks on print, we would like them to be given
> the option of choosing colour or black and white. Is there any 
software
> that will do this for us? At the moment the user has to go into
> properties and make the change here. It is difficult to always 
remember
> to do this and it is somewhat unfair to penalize someone for this
> oversight. In many of our libraries, the printer is at the 
circulation
> desk. The user goes to the circulation desk to receive their copies.
> This means that we do not need a print server solution. In our larger
> libraries we use LPT1. Is there cheap software that will simply 
prompt
> the user to choose colour or black and white copies?
>  
> Regards
> John
 
		
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