Yale-Top University, Outstanding In-plant

Yale University

New Haven, Conn.

Yale University provides its professors and students an environment that's unlikely to be matched at any other campus—and that includes the services provided by its in-plant.

"In the academic world, we're unique in the wide range of services that we provide to our clients," says Richard Masotta, director of Yale's Reprographic and Imaging Services (RIS).

That boast isn't mere sales talk. With roughly 100 employees and workspace at three locations on campus, RIS's myriad offerings range from graphic design and Web site development to copier maintenance and electronic, color, laser and offset printing. RIS also manages a technology and business center that allows visitors to test drive new products and handles mail room services, including daily deposits of donations, tuition payments and school loan repayments to the tune of $4 to $5 million.

The department furthermore boasts a data entry group, a fulfillment center, a technical support staff, a marketing department and a special consultation print manager who coordinates the largest of Yale's print jobs, such as the 50,000 copies of the six-color, book-sized application that go out to prospective students each year.

Beyond all that, RIS owns screen printing equipment and dye-sublimation printers, which lets them print novelty items for sale at commencement exercises and alumni events. And with Yale's 300th anniversary in 2001, RIS has been churning out tons of caps, mugs and mouse pads.

"We don't set any boundaries on what we do here," says Masotta. "We seek to see what services the campus community will find beneficial, and whether we can deliver those services in a cost-effective, quality way. If so, then it makes sense for us to think about doing it."

That willingness to experiment has led RIS into the poster-production and framing business as well.

"We're developing a Web site so that people will be able to look at collections of artwork, whether from the Yale archives or out of the museums around here, decide which ones they'd like to have, pick a size, color of matte and framing style, and issue that request to us," says Masotta.

RIS will then print digital images of that artwork on large-format printers at 1,800 dpi, send the artwork to their merchandise section for cutting, mounting, matting, framing and packaging, and deliver it to the client.

"That's not a traditional print shop type of thing, but it uses the technology of printing that we have here," says Masotta. "We have sign-making equipment for vinyl cutting of signs and will be getting into embroidery and engraving—the whole gamut. We print, but not necessarily on paper. We'll print on anything."

RIS is branching out into document preservation as well—and with filing cabinets across campus overflowing with unindexed and untrackable pages from payroll, employment applications and records of alumni donations, the shop is guaranteed work for decades. Masotta says that RIS has acquired two software packages that will allow them to take paper—or output that was originally destined to hit paper—and electronically integrate and capture that data in a digital image. That doesn't sound very impressive, but the software will also allow the user to incorporate index functions so that all the data can be organized and searched.

"The alumni development group, which solicits donations from alumni, has a million or so pages of documentation on givers to Yale," says Masotta. "We're back-scanning all that paper with Kodak 3510 scanners—85 page-per-minute duplex scanners—into a database and indexing it so that the alumni group can look up anyone's giving record over a secured interface to the database rather than search for it by hand."

Everything new coming into the alumni group, whether by e-mail, fax or snail mail, is scanned and added to the files, eliminating the need for the actual paper.

RIS plans to use that same software to pay off the 5,000 or so invoices that Yale receives weekly. "The paper comes in one door; we [scan, process and] shred it and send it out the other door. It never leaves the room," says Masotta. "We're always trying to include new technology in everything that we do."

by W. ERIC MARTIN

Eric Martin can be contacted at: eric@twowriters.net

Key Equipment:

• Kodak 3510 scanners

• Two-color 11x17˝ A.B.Dick 9985

• Two A.B.Dick 9800 duplicators with Townsend color heads

• Two-color Hamada 61XL

• Two A.B.Dick 1200 envelope feeders

• A.B.Dick/Itek DPM2000 platesetter

• Jennings screen press

• ColorSpan DisplayMaker wide-format printers

• Xerox DocuTech 6180