Aarhus State Library

The activity is high in the large round room on the first floor at the yellow brick building in daily speech called ‘the tower of books’. We are visiting the State Library in Aarhus a place where users each year produce more than two million prints. 

In earlier days the users had to wait in line to collect their prints, but today the traffic runs smoothly because any user of the library can choose for himself from which of the eight printers he wants to collect his prints.

”In general the new system means more focus on the users and their needs. We used to experience a great dissatisfaction which has now turned into user satisfaction,” says head of system management Frank Lund.

There are 120 workstations connected to the SafeCom print system at the State Library. Previous to installing the SafeCom solution most of the computers sent the print to the same printer, now the user is free to decide where and when the physical printing is executed.Printing is always where you need it

Reduced chaos 

Each user has his own identity and unique code. Once the user has finished working at the workstation and has decided which material to print he goes to any of the eight printers and enters his code on the display next to the printer. This releases the documents to be printed. It means that the student or other guest can stay at the computer instead of running back and forth between computer and printer. 

”We get rid of the traffic and we avoid that documents are lost and that there’s a pile of uncollected papers at the printer every night,” says Frank Lund, who expects a lower number of total prints when the library introduces pay per print around New Year. Students will still have an amount of free prints, but the rest of the users will pay the cost price.

Everything is one line

Generally the new system has given the employees an easier workday. Partly because of the users’ satisfaction, partly because the documents that earlier had to be found in the basement and copied manually now are scanned and put directly into the user’s own print queue - ready to be picked up. The library gets the same possibility with the 60 “shelf kilometres” of low frequent material placed in Skejby 20 kilometres away, where the State Library is currently ex-panding. 

“This solution will save the library a lot of money in delivery expenses. At the same time it means better service because the material is ready right away,” says the head of system management. He is not counting on a cut in employees because of the efficiency of the system; however, in the future there will be less hiring. 

The future also brings new microfilm scanners at the State Library in Århus. Scanners that can connect with the SafeCom system, so that the users no longer have to copy from the screen but can collect the document in the printer instead. “All in all we see this as a system that can deliver all that you want out on paper,” says Frank Lund.