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Printing Reduction Strategies: Saving & Sharing Documents

This guide is dedicated to assisting in the reduction of printing on campus.

Saving & Sharing options

Microsoft Word 2013 Google Docs Adobe Acrobat Pro Moodle
Saving
  • Microsoft Word - Save a Document as PDF
    • File > Save As
    • Select a location
    • Click the Save as type drop-down and select PDF
    • Click Save
  • Google docs - Download a document as a PDF
    • Open a document
    • File > Download as...
    • Select PDF
  • Adobe Acrobat Pro (available in Library: Learning Studio, Innovation Space, and PCs with scanners)
    • Acrobat can optimize a PDF, reducing the file size (recommended).  Use Adobe Acrobat Pro to recognize text (OCR - optical character recognition) after you scan. Doing so makes the text searchable, selectable, and accessible to screen reader software. Also use Adobe Acrobat Pro to rotate pages, combine multiple documents into a single PDF, and set up other accessibility options. 
Sharing
  • Google Drive
    • Anything in Google drive may be shared with specific people or with the entire college community.
    • 1 TB of storage per person using a beloit.edu email.
  • Moodle
    • Files may be shared with students in a Moodle course. Adding the file(s) to Moodle is as easy as dragging and dropping them from your computer to the Moodle course page. 
    • Where possible, link to the article via the library database. This allows the student to understand the source and provide useful statistics for the library. You will need to add the ez-proxy prefix for off campus access.

Sharing Citations and Documents with Zotero

In addition to saving PDFs and other documents, Zotero can be used to share links and citations with other researchers through the use of groups. To use groups, everyone who wants to share citations and links must register for a free Zotero account.

Once you've configured a group at Zotero.org, you and your group members will see the group library whenever they sync their Zotero standalone application or browser plugin with their Zotero accounts. Here's what you'll see:

 

For more information about Zotero and Zotero groups, visit the Zotero documentation pages or contact Josh Hickman.

Saving Documents by Emailing Them to Yourself

Most article databases have an email option which you can use to send documents to yourself to read later.  Look for an envelope icon or email selection.