Farewell
to Hard Copy Services
By
Maria Chin
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After serving the CityU community diligently for
14 years, the Hard Copy Services (HCS) will retire on June
30, 2008. The HCS came into service in 1994. You see
and walk by its productions everyday, for example, the big banners
hanging above the red doors entrance to the Academic Building
and those at the University Circle, the different fashion of posters
and leaflets you see in various on-campus and off-campus exhibitions
and seminars, the printed and digital media your colleagues and
students use to articulate their hard work.
In the light of all-round, quality print shops blooming in the
consumer market and their easy access, and the popularity of personal
production gadgets like camcorder, scanner, laser printer, CD/DVD
writer, and a huge selection of PC based multimedia software,
etc., the role of the HCS was reviewed, and it was agreed that
it is high time for the HCS to end its duty and the resources
be redeployed.
In preparation for the closure, a date had to be set. June 30,
2008 was picked to allow time to complete Semester B student orders
and a couple of regular staff orders; it is also before jobs for
orientations and exhibitions due in August and September come
in. Closure announcements were sent to staff and students in April;
they were also reminded to look for other suitable print shop
soonest so as not to be caught in the last minute. Department
and staff requiring assistance on that can email us at cc@cityu.edu.hk
We, the HCS crew, would like to convey our heartfelt thanks to
departments, staff, students and alumni (when they were students)
who have supported the services in the past years. On completing
our last orders in two weeks' time, the roller gate of the HCS
Counter will be shut permanently.
A Brief History of the HCS
The HCS, first known as the Hard Copy Centre, was founded in
February 1994 to provide mainly colour and slide output, video
recording, letter cutting etc. services to departments and students
of the university. It was then combined with the Design and Production
team of MPU to form the Media Production Service (MPS) in September
1998. In a management re-organization, the MPU (including the
MPS) was merged with the University Press and moved to the Festival
Walk Office on 1 March 2003. In order to provide multimedia production
services to users, the Computing Services Centre (CSC) resumed
the original functions of the Hard Copy Centre under the name
of Hard Copy Services (HCS).
Why we have the HCS?
With software like CorelDraw, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Freehand,
Microsoft PowerPoint and many others, users can easily create
high quality and attractive documents and presentation materials
on their desktop computer. However, with ordinary colour printers
of the older days, it is not easy to produce the desirable printouts.
Also, it always takes users two hours or more to print just a
few pages of printouts and/or transparencies of photo-quality.
Furthermore, users may experience difficulties when they want
to
To help staff and students overcome these difficulties, the HCS
has equipped with input and output devices, which are usually
found in professional print shops. These devices include a 5000
dpi color scanner, 600 dpi color laser copier / printer, 60"
width plotting device, CD duplicator and so on.