Bindery System Helps Keep Work On Campus

To Naomi Quiram, it is vital to keep as much print work in-house as possible.

"It is always difficult when you outsource because of the time requirements," says Quiram, director of Print and Mail Services at Gustavus Adolphus College, a private liberal arts college in St. Peter, Minn.

Her in-plant's recent installation of a Standard Horizon HOF-20 Sheet Feeder in-line with an SPF 200A Bookletmaking System she says, has helped the shop keep more jobs on campus due to the improved flexibility it brought, as well as the high quality of its output.

The in-plant's two full-time and 20 student employees are using the Standard Horizon equipment to produce stitched booklets, newsletters and programs for commencement and campus conferences at Gustavus Adolphus College, which is affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

"We are a small shop so we could not go with an in-line finisher," Quiram contends. "We needed something that was near-line or off-line so that we could have output from multiple printers."

The installation of the Standard Horizon equipment put an older C.P. Bourg BDF into retirement.

"It could no longer meet our needs, and with the age of the equipment it could not keep up with the increased volume that we are now seeing with digital printing on campus," Quiram notes. The in-plant uses a Xerox 3000 and a Canon 1110 to handle this digital printing.

Quiram says it was important to find a bindery option that was user friendly so that the student employees could easily finish jobs.

"They can run jobs with little or no supervision," Quiram reports. "It really does almost run itself."

Keeping printing and finishing work in-house also allows designers to have more time to produce important jobs without worrying about deadlines set by outside printers. For example, final materials for the college's graduation piece are delivered at noon on Friday, and it needs to be ready for commencement on Sunday.

"We can't get the information before that because professors have until noon to get their grades in," Quiram explains. "If there has to be a last-minute change, that can't be handled by an off-campus account because of the timelines they require. We can get those pieces revised, printed, finished and ready for all the different campus events."

—By Chris Bauer