Hartlepool Community Hubs in the North East of England provide access to a wide range of resources, services, and activities for education, recreation, and community engagement. Printing is an essential public service that they recently enhanced with the launch of Netloan Wi-Fi print. Denise Sparrowhawk, Operations Librarian and Matthew Picken, Assistant Ops Librarian spoke with Lorensbergs about the changes this has brought to their libraries.
Importance of library print services
“Printing is a crucial service for Hartlepool library customers. It’s one of the main things we do for people.
“It’s always been important to provide printing from PCs. Job seeking and digital skills developments are closely linked to People’s Network use and customers often need to print off application forms and other items when using the PCs. However, there’s been popular demand for some time now to print from own devices too.
“When we launched the new wireless printing service (in April 2024), within two weeks new memberships had increased by over 40% compared to what we would usually see.
“Since then, Wi-Fi print volumes have on average more than doubled total printing each month at the Community Hub.”
Choosing Netloan Wi-Fi print
Originally, the library enabled users to email documents from own devices to the library which staff would then print off for them. This often included boarding passes and postage labels. However, staff needed to manually delete print request emails and attachments for security purposes and for GDPR compliance. It wasn’t a satisfactory process either in terms of staff time or for data management.
“We spoke with other libraries and reviewed solutions. We concluded it would be best to manage wireless printing in the same system as desktop printing and that the Netloan system was ideal for this.
“We knew it would make it much easier if staff managed all printing in Netloan. The print release screen is very familiar and all our staff are comfortable using it. It’s an established and easy interface to use. It was also appealing to grow our print services without taking on an additional supplier.”
Another huge benefit for having a combined print service was the holistic reporting: “We can track all print volumes much better now that it is all in one place.”
Introducing the new service
The staff found the new Wi-Fi print service easy to grasp:
“Before launching it publicly, staff practised by sending documents to print from their own devices, then releasing them from the Netloan print release portal. It’s practically the same as releasing desktop print jobs, all we needed to do was to select the Wi-Fi print filter button on the queued jobs.
“It was great to roll out such a big technical improvement so smoothly. IT changes usually meet a little bit of resistance, but not in this case!
“The public have taken to using the new print service really well on the whole. It’s great that it took off so quickly, with new memberships up by over 40% in the first two weeks.
“It’s easy for users to join with proof of address for full membership, or they can join without showing proof of address which allows them to use PCs, printing and a reduced borrowing allowance. Now that people are joining the library in order to print, they’re more likely to use other library services as well.”
Making the most of wireless printing
The introduction of the new wireless printing service coincided with a full PC refresh and Netloan upgrade. It was the final piece in providing a completely modernised PC and print service that the library has been keen to promote.
“We’ve used social media and a video provided by Lorensbergs to publicise the service. We’ve also highlighted its availability by customising the posters provided with our own QR codes for the print upload portal, which we’ve displayed all around the building. It’s so easy for users to scan the code and submit their documents for printing.
“All in all, we’re very happy with the solution. Customers like it and it definitely makes life easier from a staff point of view.”
With thanks to Denise Sparrowhawk and Matthew Picken at Hartlepool Libraries for sharing their Wi-Fi print experiences with us.
