Printing To Library Printers

A guide to printing to the public printers at the Gustavus Public Library

The price for printing or copying is 25 cents per page. You can print or copy up to 5 pages of reference material for free. Additional pages, and any printing of personal information, including e-mail, is subject to the 25 cents per page charge.

Printing From Library Computers

As of April, 2011, the Public Use Computers print as follows:

  • The default printer for all five public-use computers is called Laser. In order to print to this printer it must be turned on and loaded with paper and on-line.
  • Also available is a color printer. To print to it, choose Print from your program's file menu, and in the list of printers, choose Color. For more information on the printer, visit the printer's home page.

If you are having problems printing, check the following:

  1. Know what printer you are printing to. Choose print from your program's file menu.
  2. Make sure that the printer has paper, is turned on, and is "Ready."
  3. If that doesn't work, ask your librarian about the problem. For persistent problems, address an e-mail message to everyone@corvid.info .

Printing From USB Flash Drive

The color printer has the ability to print some types of files directly from a USB flash drive. Plug it into the panel on the color printer and follow the on-screen instructions. Note: this works for photos, PDF files, and possibly some other formats. For many other files, it will be necessary to plug the drive into a library computer, open the file, and print from there.

Printing From Personal Computers

You may wish to print from your own personal computer that you have brought to the library. This requires a one-time setup to connect your computer to the library printer of your choice.

From Windows Computers

The easiest way to connect a Windows computer to a library printer is as follows. This procedure will automatically install the appropriate driver software for Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows Server 2000-20012 32-bit and 64-bit operating systems.

  1. Click your start button, then click Run. Alternatively, hold down your Windows key and press R. Either way brings up the "Run" dialog box.
  2. To connect to the laser printer, type in \\print.gustavus.lib.a.us\laser and press enter or click OK. Wait patiently for the printer to install.
  3. To connect to the color printer, type in \\print.gustavus.lib.a.us\color and press enter or click OK. Wait patiently for the printer to install.
  4. If you are asked for a password, the username to enter is gustavus\patron . Do not enter a password (leave that field blank).

The printers should now be in your list of available printers so you can select them when printing from any program.

From Non-Windows Computers

Mac and Linux computers (and probably lots of other devices) using the library's wireless or Ethernet network can print directly to the library printers over the network. Attempt to add a network printer using the capabilities built into your operating system. The printers may be found automatically, or you may have to install the driver software first. Drivers for your operating system are available from the manufacturers' web sites. Library technicians are unable to assist with personal computers, especially non-Windows, but the following information may assist in your effort.

Laser Printer 

Color Printer

Technical Details

  • Both printers are plugged directly into the library's Ethernet network via their built-in Ethernet interfaces.
  • Print jobs come over the network to the printers from the the main print server mail64 and also still from the old print server, DC1. The printers are locally installed on the print servers, mapped to standard TCP/IP ports. The printers are shared out as \\mail64\laser and \\mail64\color. In configuring the ports, it was necessary to connect them to a static IP address. There are reservations in the DHCP server (DC2) for the printers.
  • The printers themselves can be addressed via their DNS names, laser.gustavus.lib.ak.us and color.gustavus.lib.ak.us .
  • The print servers mail64 and DC1 get the print jobs from workstations over the network. The workstations have the printers installed with the standard names used above. They print to the network shares named above. LASER is set to be the default. The Color and Laser printers are assigned to all Active Directory users at the library using group policy, but this seems to affect only Windows 7 and later, not XP or Server 2003.
  • The easiest way to install a printer on a Windows computer is to start-run \\mail64 then click OK, then double-click on the printer you want to install (do not open the printers folder).

For general computer troubleshooting notes, go to the computer support page.

  • Printer-friendly version