Done with Posters for Today

Hey all. All of the poster printing slots are filled for the day. As I write this, there are still 4 slots available for tomorrow (Friday). Head over to http://wic.library.upenn.edu/wicfacilities/lending.html if you'd like to reserve one.

Posters are Back

Our poster printer was cleaned and serviced this morning, and it's up and running again.

No Posters Today :(

Our poster printer is down today. We're hoping to have it up and running again sometime tomorrow.

Penn's Biomedical Library offers a poster printing service similar to ours (with the same pricing, but with additional payment options), available to UPenn faculty, students, staff, UPHS staff, and affiliates by appointment only. See their FAQ (http://www.library.upenn.edu/computing/Health_Sciences/biomed_poster/poster_faq.html) for more details.

Also, both FedEx Office (formerly Kinko's) (3535 Market Street, 215-386-5679) and Campus Copy (3907 Walnut Street, 215-386-6410) provide poster printing services.

Reserving a Poster

We've decided to move to a reservation-based approach to printing posters in the Vitale Digital Media Lab. From now on, when you want to print a poster, you just need to reserve one ahead of time online.

To reserve a slot for yourself, follow these instructions:

1. Login with your PennKey at http://checkout.sas.upenn.edu
2. If presented with a choice of locations, choose "Weigle Information Commons"
3. Enter the date and time you wish to print your poster (Maximum 1 poster per day, up to a day in advance), with a duration of 1 hour.
4. Click on "Find Resources" to browse through the equipment available for the dates you entered.
5. Choose "Poster Printing".
6. Add a printing slot to your reservation by clicking on the "Add" button next to an item.
7. Click on "Current Reservation" to see a summary of your reservation.
8. If there are problems with your reservation, you will see them in a red box in the lower left part of your browser. You will need to correct them before confirming your reservation.
9. Click the "Confirm" button. (Please note that you will NOT receive a confirmation email.)
10. Bring your poster file to the Vitale Digital Media Lab on the date and time you requested. Your reservation will be automatically deleted by the system if you don't check in with a lab consultant within 3 hours of your reserved time slot.

• We will do our best to help you print at the time of your arrival, with allowances as needed for handling other patron needs.
• Poster requests arriving on time will receive processing priority over late arrivals.
• It can take up to 30 minutes to prepare your poster for sending to the printer.
• Posters are generally ready for pickup the same day, but we do not guarantee this.

Happy New Year - and no PennCash

Happy New Year and welcome back. For those of you who actually show up in the lab this week (and I'm not holding my breath), the PennCash system is expected to be down campus-wide. Since we handle printing in the lab with PennCash, please ask the lab consultant on duty for help if you need to print on January 4, 5, 6 (and possibly 7, but we'll let you know if it goes on that long).

Good-Bye Posters

Just a quick FYI. Lots of people have printed posters here in the lab and then never picked them up. We'll be throwing out any and all posters left in the lab on September 3. If you have a poster here, please pick it up ASAP.

Pas de posters

The poster printer is back online and working again. The poster printer is down today. We have our best people on it, and we hope to have it back up again by the end of the day. In the mean time, we're taking names as usual, along with phone #s so we can call if it comes back up today.

Poster Printing at the Biomedical Library!

Very exciting news! The printer is open to Penn faculty, students, staff, UPHS staff, and affiliates. The poster printing service is intended for professional posters only, with priority given to scientific posters. Staff is available to print your poster, but will not provide design, formatting, or editing services.

Printing posters at Biomed is very similar to printing them here (same pricing, software, equipment, etc.), with a couple notable exceptions:

• Printing is by appointment only, which means you no longer need to wake up before dawn just to make sure you're one of the first 7 who need posters that day!
  
• You can pay with a credit card or with a budget number in addition to PennCash and departmental copy cards!

And of course, it's much more conveniently located for those of you already over at the Medical, Vet, and Dental Schools, or one of the hospitals.

To make an appointment, contact the Biomedical Library Reference Desk by email (libref@mail.med.upenn.edu) or call (215-898-5818) or drop by between 11am and 6pm weekdays Use the online form at http://www.library.upenn.edu/forms/biomed/posterprinting.html.

See the full announcement at http://www.library.upenn.edu/computing/Health_Sciences/biomed_poster/poster_about.html, where you can also find a link to their FAQ.

New Poster Printer Prices

Starting today, we will be charging $0.02 per square inch inch for poster printing. So if your poster is 24 inches by 36 inches, the charge would be $0.02 x 24x 36 = $17.28.

Additionally, we are now required to charge 7% tax for posters which are not school-related. Most posters printed in the lab are exempt from this tax. Examples of tax-exempt posters are posters for class assignments, for academic conferences, for student groups, for official dorm or college house activities, or for sports teams/events.

Posters for which we charge tax include posters for a birthday party, posters to hang on your dorm room wall, or presents for friends/family. To calculate tax, use the pricing structure listed above and multiply the poster price by 1.07. For example, an 18"x24" poster would be 1.07 x .02 x 18 x 24 = $9.24

All this in more in our Poster Printer FAQ!

A Poster Printing Fable

Joan woke up this morning and decided to come to the Vitale Digital Media Lab in Van Pelt Library to print a poster for her Urban Studies presentation. She got to the lab at 9:15am, just a few minutes after it opened. But when she arrived, Joan discovered that the poster printer queue was already full for the day! In fact, the lab consultant on duty told her that people had been waiting in line outside Van Pelt at 8:20am--ten minutes before the building even opened--so that they could be assured one of the day's 7 lucky poster printing slots, and even THEN, the lab consultant had to turn away 3 people who'd been waiting since before the lab was open. So Joan went home unhappy, wondering how she'd ever get her poster printed in time without having to spend $120 at Kinkos or Campus Copy.

The moral of this story is The Early Bird Prints the Poster. We open at 9am on weekdays and 12noon on Saturday and Sunday.

Disclaimer: The preceding story is true. Only the names have been changed to protect the innocent.

Ok, that was a dumb fable, but no joke; they really were lined up outside at 8:20AM. Get here EARLY.

Poster Printer Prices

We're changing our poster printing prices from $.35/inch to $.50/inch on the longest side of the poster. This means that a 36"x48" poster will cost $24.00. (The same poster will cost you $100 at Campus Copy or Kinkos.) We continue to accept only PennCash as a means of payment. For more exciting information on printing posters in the lab, be sure to check out our Poster Printer FAQ.

Trashing Posters

Just a quick FYI. Lots of people have printed posters here in the lab and then never picked them up. We'll be throwing out any and all posters left in the lab on December 21. If you have a poster here, please pick it up ASAP.

Glossy Paper

I have some good news and some bad news. The BAD news is that we're still out of glossy paper due to a backorder situation with our supplier. The GOOD news is that we should have some more by this Wednesday. Cross your fingers!

Matte Only

[Update: We're back in the glossy business, everyone. So print those shiny posters til your heart's content.]

We're out of glossy paper again! Apparently, news of our poster printer has spread around campus, and somehow you people managed to go through 5 huge rolls of poster paper in less than a month. Anyhoo... we're in the process of ordering more, but it will be at least tuesday before any arrives, so we're down to our last 2 rolls of matte paper until then.

Make a great Poster with PowerPoint!

Trying to create a poster to explain your research project to others? Wondering how to make a powerful visual statement? We will explore designing your poster in Power Point. We will look at page size options, font and color choices, Word Art, Autoshapes and drawing tools. Bring your poster information with you as well as your personal laptop if appropriate. We will share tips and tricks for poster formatting, show examples and discuss preparing a PDF for printing here in the Vitale Digital Media Lab or similar facility. This is a hands-on workshop. It will be held in the Class of 1968 Seminar Room (room 124) in the Information Commons.

Sign up Online!

Poster Printer FAQ

For those of you working on posters, we've created an FAQ all about the poster printer here in the lab. It includes information on everything from pricing to which fonts you should use, to where you can get your poster laminated. We've linked it in the sidebar on the right, from the main Weigle Information Commons page, and right beneath the sentence you're reading now.

http://wic.library.upenn.edu/lab/posterprinter.html

Mask and Wig + Digital Media Lab

As you know, the lab is open to all Penn students, faculty, and staff. We even get student groups who come in to work on their websites or posters or programs or videos. Well, I'm sure you're as excited as we are that venerable comedy troupe Mask and Wig has used the software and the poster printer here in the Vitale Digital Media Lab to create signs that are actually being used in their Spring show, "Troy Story: You Odyssey It To Believe It!" (I'm told that's some sort of humorous pun) So be sure to check out their show. You can buy tickets on the walk, or at the Mask and Wig website.

No Red Ink

Update: Ok, we're back in business. Magenta (not red. my bad.) ink is loaded and in plentiful supply.

We ran out of red ink on the poster printer tonite. Sorry! (Thanks, Neal, for checking in and letting me know about the problem.) There's been an onslaught of poster printing in the last week the likes of which we've never seen, and our printing supplies dwindled much faster than expected. If it's any consolation (and I know it's not), we have enough glossy paper now to last us well into next year. I'm pretty sure we do have more ink down in the supply closet, but we won't have access to it until Monday, so the poster printer will be out of commission until then. If you're in dire straits and can't wait that long, check out Kinkos or Campus Copy. They both charge a lot more than we do, but then they probably have red ink, too. (note: this applies only to the poster printer. The normal color printer should be working fine.)

Glossy Paper

The lab ran out of glossy paper for the poster printer on Friday. But we're back in stock today, so we have both glossy and matte papers for all your poster printing needs.