Before I started back at uni, the printing we did was limited to an occasional document for review when I was working from home. Now, however, I'm printing unfeasible numbers of pages of Pope-related information.
Since I was at uni last, Al Gore invented the internet, which is proving v useful as all of our readings are supplied electronically. There's a website that has, like, every document from the Middle Ages. And all the chapters of books we need to read are "digitised". It rocks. But you try reading 300 pages of Pope-related materials a week on a screen. No thanks.
To save paper, I've been copying and pasting all the website documents into a single word document, reducing the font size to 10 point and then printing double-sided, with the printer set to draft quality. Can't copy/paste the "digitised" chapters as they are all images.
Anyway, I just discovered a new way of saving more ink. It's a special eco font (click here to download), designed to use as little ink as possible while still being readable. I have installed it, made it the default font in my normal template, and am totally going to print next week's reading using it.
If you want to go one step further and weed out the things you really don't need to print, try print greener. It's a utility (free for Windows, slight cost for Macs) that highlights and removes blank bits etc from your document, to save paper and ink.
Hurrah for small things that help save resources!
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3 comments:
But it is not a Friday...
I'm confused...
:P
Agree about not reading on screen.
Perhaps another option might be (although perhaps not as green), if you have space in your house is to get second hand copies of books readings are from, which are often very cheap, plus you get the whole thing which may be useful for understanding the context of a chapter.
Hope the studies go well!
Good suggestion, Ed. I'd say second-hand books = pretty green!
And it's an option that would work well for the subjects where the text books are used year after year. But on average, we're being asked to read chapters of 4-5 books a week - that's 65 or so books over the semester! - plus primary sources. It's also the first year the subject has been offered. Some of the books are out of print, too. So in this case, I think not v practical - although I have been borrowing the books from the library when I can :-)
Sounds like you are going to be busy... 65 odd books would lead to towering piles strewn throughout you abode that could only lend to the look of a wizard's tower which would be cool though.
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