Wireless Printing through the Google Cloud
Wireless printing is lacking in quite a few libraries – and for good reason. Between driver issues, security concerns, operating systems differences, staff training, cost, and a host of other potential pitfalls and pervasive annoyances, the hurdles quickly become imposing. Google Cloud Printing eliminates almost all of those impediments. It provides a simple, free printing interface that is compatible with just about every device with an internet connection. Through this service, patrons can print to your public printer without having to install any software. All that’s required of them is a Google account. All librarians have to do is follow the steps below.
What You’ll Need
1. A Google account. You can get one here - https://accounts.google.com/SignUp . Make your username sound somewhat official. This name will be published along with your printer’s name.
2. The Google Chrome web browser. You can get that here - https://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/browser/ .
3. A computer with an internet connection. This PC must be able to print to your public printer. This PC has to be turned on for Google Cloud Printing to work. This is an
excellent opportunity to use a Raspberry Pi or similar mini-PC. You could also use one of your servers.
What Your Patrons Will Need
Just a Google account.
Caveats
Before we get into the tutorial, there are a few things you might want to consider. You can decide whether or not these are deal breakers for your library.
1. You are using Google to do this. Decide for yourself what sort of privacy concerns this raises.
2. Google Cloud Printing is still in beta and trust me, that’s being nice. If you don’t run into any problems during the install, get in your car and drive down to Monmouth Raceway because lady luck is smiling on you.
3. Any printer you decide to make public is available to anyone who can get their hands on the published link. Anyone with that link can print to that device. This may sound scary, but consider how many libraries publish their fax numbers. One nice thing is that you can set limits on the amount of pages each user can print per day…
4. …unfortunately, as per point #2, that doesn’t seem to be working so well as of yet. I probably should mention here that this service is probably best used with some sort of print management software – the kind that requires patrons to pay before things actually print.
5. I’ve tried this with a bunch of different document formats. I’ve had success with PDF files, text (ASCII files), and Word 2003-2013 documents. I haven’t tried it with image formats. RTFs don’t seem to work for some reason.
The Installation
1. Open up Chrome on that PC mentioned earlier – the one with access to your public printer. Now, log into your Google Account.
2. In Chrome’s upper right hand corner is the settings button. Click on that. On the menu that appears, select “Settings”.
3. On the new page that opens, click on “Show advanced settings…”
4. Scroll almost all the way to the bottom. Click on “Add Printers”.
5. Now the real fun begins. It might take a minute, but eventually you should see a screen that looks like this:
Select the printer that you want to use. It’s up to you what you do with that last check box – especially if you will only be using Google Cloud Printing for one printer and have no intention of adding others.
6. The next screen that comes up looks something like this:
Click on Manage your printers.
7. If everything goes right, you should see a screen like the one below with the printer of your choice listed in a box with some other printing options.
You probably won’t, though. If and when your printer fails to make it onto that list, go back to Step #2. Instead of it saying “Add Printers”, the settings menu will have an option for disconnecting printers and managing them. Select “Disconnect Printers”
and go through the steps again until your printer shows up.
8. Made it this far? Great! Select your printer from the list (as seen in Step #7) and click on “Share”. Once you do that, this screen will come up:
To the right of the word “Private” click on the word “Change”. On the next screen, click on the top radio button for “Anyone with the link has access to the printer” and click save.
9. From the next screen that appears, make sure that you copy the URL of your shared printer. This is how your patrons will connect. This is also where you can specify the printing limit for individual users.
10. How you publish the link to you printer is ultimately up to you. I think the best way to do it is by hyperlinking it on a website. That definitely makes it easier than typing it out. You could also include a guide on how to connect a patron PC to that printer on the same page.
This connection/guide page can be hosted on the server that runs your website. A better and less public solution would be to set a web server up on the computer that you are using as your print server. Remember, any Windows PC can run it’s own web server. You just have to enable IIS. You can find a how-to for that here -
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms181052(v=vs.80).aspx . Linux users should install Apache.
Guide for Connecting to the Public Printer
1. Log into a Google Account.
2. Navigate to the link location of your library’s public printer (i.e. that long link you got from Step #9 above).
3. From that page, select “Add Printer”
4. Once that completes, navigate to https://www.google.com/cloudprint/ .
5. Click on Print in the upper left hand corner. From here, follow the prompts. It’s just like adding an attachement to an email. Again, you have to be logged into your Google account for this to work.
6. On the last screen, just make sure that you select the appropriate printer. There are other option for some really funky things. Unfortunately, you can’t delete these.
