Printing Services

High speed printing

Many serious researchers insist on paper copies of material. They say a computer screen is not adequate for serious study. In addition, printing to ordinary printers is very slow. Therefore we should have a facility that will allow a researcher to select resources (few or many) and then send a command so that all will be printed on a high speed printer or placed in a postscript or pdf file so Kinko's can easily print it.

Our production process is expected to make possible many different formats (postscript, eps, rtf, html, pdf, vml, svg). It may be useful to consider this in selecting a printer.

The Knight Foundation has a printer which also serves as a color copier. It produces 22 pages/minute and is a Toshiba FC22 which costs in the range of $20,000-$24,995 with an EFI Fiery system. (from CopyCo. 1-800-5copyco, Vickie Birnberg, Boca Raton 800-526-7926, local 428-1300, ext. 3128)

Printing mailing labels

A procedure recommended at Kinko's is to maintain your contact list in Microsoft Excel. Kinko's can do a "mailmerge" to import names and addresses into Microsoft Word which has templates that fit Avery labels. (It doesn't matter what you name your fields because the operator selects the fields for use in printing labels.)

If one prefers a more robust database for maintaining the contact list, the following information may be helpful.

PDF files are highly preferred for printing on Kinko's high speed printers. When a Microsft Word document is given to the printing staff at Kinko's, they are likely to use "Kinko's Tools" to convert it to a PDF file for printing. If a postscript file is brought to Kinko's, they will "distill" it into a PDF file for printing.

Carol warns that if we prepare a PDF file for printing onto Avery labels, their printers may not position the text on paper in exactly the same way that the printer in our office does. So, some experimentation may be necessary. She recommends e-mailing the file; Kinko's on Federal Highway in Boca Raton is usa1071@kinkos.com.