[OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Spine Label Printers?

[Joe Atzberger]

Some libraries have been surprised by the amount of noise a given printer
generates, something not typically listed in catalog or web retail.
 Single-label thermal printers tend to be the friendliest in that regard,
and small and quiet enough to fit at most workstations.  Great for replacing
damaged labels at the circ or reference station.

I'm not sure about your library's situation, but if they are going to print
in large volumes, you should also consider a laser printer.  Thermal
printers can do high quality (i.e., reliably scannable barcodes), but the 51
labels-per-minute of the Dymo 450 (current version of the 400) is still
about a fifth of that of the HP LaserJet 4050 (8.5ppm @1200dpi x 30 labels
per page = 255 labels-per-minute).  To be fair, I should also say that Dymo
makes "turbo" and "dual" versions of their LabelWriter, but they're still
not that fast.

Regarding stock and durability, a combination of standard office-quality
labels and super-adhesive "label protectors" like
these<http://thelibrarystore.com/product.jsp?path=-1|23268|83632|83679|83681&id=15211>seems
to be more effective starting with higher quality adhesive labels on
big print runs.  The reason is that the HQ labels tend to be thicker and jam
in the printer more often, and still don't match the protector's grip.  The
permanence of the label may not be as important to your libraries as it was
to my former clients (K-12 schools and juvenile prisons), but I thought I'd
mention it anyway.

--Joe

On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 11:46 AM, Amy Terlaga <terlaga at biblio.org> wrote:

>  Hi all—
>
> What is your library system using to print your spine labels with
> Evergreen?
>
> One of our libraries (going live in March) is looking for a low-cost spine
> label printer recommendation and we’d like to hear the good (and bad)
> experiences out there …
>
> Thanks!
>
> Amy
>
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