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Proposal to Acquire High Capacity and Large-Media Printers for History Dept. Computer Lab Fall 2013 Expanding Pedagogical, Technological and Scholarly Capabilities in the History Department Prepared by: Gregory Stern, Ph.D. candidate, Department of History Description: This project is designed to improve the print capabilities of faculty, staff, and graduate students within the Florida State University History Department. There is also a need to ensure that office users can have efficient solutions to hardware failures. For example, if instructors or teaching assistants are holding frequent office hours for their classes, but also need to get documents printed for their professional projects, they need to have ready-to-go alternate printers in case of a malfunction such as a toner leak, roller wearing out, errors in compatibility between a printer and computer, etc.... Being able to produce print versions of standard documents, papers, and posters are essential elements in communication between instructors, students, and other receivers of knowledge—such as conference audiences. The new printers, networked to the department’s lab computers, will be a far more efficient solution for the high-volume jobs common in the humanities. For example, a graduate student trying to print out several individual chapters from a document (or drafts of a MA or PhD thesis) will be better off doing it on one high volume printer than occupying all four lower capacity printers now in place. A large format media printer (“poster” printer) will grant History Dept. users the ability to produce high-quality presentation materials without having to search through expensive alternatives such a commercial printer—users would only have to incur the modest costs of providing the actual poster/paper. “Poster sessions” are an increasingly significant venue for graduate students to present at historical conferences, but the Department has no way now to aid students seeking this option. Impact of Project on Instruction: The Department of History currently has over 500 undergraduate majors, more than 150 M.A./Ph.D. students, and over 30 full time/adjunct professors. Though some high yield print jobs are handled by the Department’s main office machines in Bellamy 401, having alternative print locations in the Bellamy 462 lab will be a great saver of time, wear and tear by having more outlets for graduate student print jobs. Also, with the inclusion of a poster printer, the ability of faculty/staff and students to prepare major presentations for classes, conferences, and guest lectures will be enhanced. An on-site poster printer can increase the variety of methods for information dissemination to students as well as improve the visibility of the department at offcampus presentations. Project plan: Implementation for the two high-capacity lab printers should not take much time other than the time to acquire the printers and the short time it would take to install them in the History computer lab located in Bellamy 462. The large format media printer will be installed in space available in the current office used by the History Dept. IT staff in Bellamy 457. There are long term plans to move the computer lab to reconfigured office space, allowing users easier access to the large format media printer. However, the need for such a printer is already clear. Relationship to other university activities: Faculty/Staff and graduate students will be able to use high-quality print capabilities to bring more professionalism into the classroom and field-related projects. For example, History Department graduate students and professors frequently attend local, regional, national, and international conferences including the American Historical Association annual meeting. As noted above, there has been a significant rise in poster-presentations at these events, and Florida State History faculty and students are hindered from taking advantage of such opportunities without an in-house large format media printer. Also, the inconveniences of the current low-capacity printer format in the computer lab discourage instructors from providing hard-copy materials to students or guest speakers. The high capacity printers can encourage more participation with print media, if for example, a graduate student in our Department’s Institute on World War II and the Human Experience needs to present on the collection to patrons or donors and wants to provide numerous document copies for attendees to keep. 1
Proposal to Acquire High Capacity and Large-Media Printers for History Dept. Computer Lab Fall 2013 These improved functions will raise the standard of instruction in Florida State classrooms and represent the university’s high scholarly production standards among other academic institutions. On-going support cost: Each printer should be a one-time purchase with periodic ink/toner replacement costs as an on-going expense. Description of project team: The printer upgrades will be handled by History Department IT staff including supervising faculty member Dr. Ron Doel, two part-time grad students, and additional support as needed from the College of Arts & Sciences IT team led by Kurt Rockenstein. Budget / budget explanation: HP Color LaserJet Enterprise M750dn Printer - $2,797.48 HP 650A Cyan/Yellow/Magenta color toner cartridges – 3 x $407.99 = $1223.97 HP 650A Black toner cartridge - $249.99 Color Printer Subtotal: $4,271.44 HP LaserJet Enterprise 600 Series M602dn Printer - $1,199.00 HP 90A Black toner cartridge - $174.99 B/W Printer Subtotal: $1,373.99 Lab Printer Subtotal: $5,645.43 HP Designjet T920 36-in PostScript ePrinter (CR355A) - $4,995 HP 727 130-ml inks: Cyan/Gray/Magenta/Yellow/Black – 5 x $80.49 = $402.45 Poster Printer Subtotal: $5,397.45 Total: $11,042.88
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