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The Ames Library

Completed

  • Default public printers to the double-sided mode.
  • Purchased 5 gallon "water island" for staff area and discontinued practice of offering individual bottled water.
  • Paper stocked throughout the library is 30% recycled post-consumer fiber when purchased and recycling containers are provided throughout the building; periodically, paper gathered in these containers is exhibited in high-use areas to raise awareness about conserving paper and printing only when necessary.
  • All public Laser printers in the building also utilize power management features; power saving mode is enabled after 30 minutes of inactivity; additionally, toner dpi is set at 300 dpi, the lowest setting available.
  • Staff receive orientation regarding individual ways they can support sustainability such as leaving office lights off in the day time and using paper from recycling trays at the public printers for in-house printing.
  • Electronic reserves staff crop out excess black when scanning reserves material. Extra black requires unnecessary amounts of toner/ink if electronic reserves resources are printed out.
  • Public computer monitors dim after 15 minutes of the screen saver.
  • The Instruction Lab, Project Rooms, and half of the computers at Scholarly Workstations and in the Information Commons are shut down for the summer and during Winter break in order to reduce energy consumption; when the building is closed for extended breaks and 3-day weekends, all public computers and printers are shut down and staff are reminded to turn their office systems off.
  • Printing & Mailing Services replaced the old Xerox machines with 7 Canon/Xerox multifuctional devices which offer a scan-to-email function in addition to printing traditional photocopies. The power saving mode ism also activated on these machines and they have been set to print and copy at their lowest settings. All staff have received instructions on these features and provide guidance to patrons when requested.

Continuing Initiatives

  • Conduct marketing campaign to advertise scan-to-email function of copy machines
  • Investigate turning off half of remaining public computers over long break periods.

Last updated: January 20, 2009