Lab Rules
Lab Access
Lab access is limited to the following:
- all currently registered Harvard Extension School students
- all Harvard Summer School students
- Harvard Institute for English Language students who are attending a class at the computer lab
Authorized students gain access to the lab by using the swipe card reader to the left of the facility’s front and rear doors. Please ring the bell if your swipe card does not work, and a member of the lab staff will open the door for you and check your ID card.
Regulations
- No food or drink in the facility.
- Students must have a Harvard ID or a scan card.
- Students may borrow equipment and manuals, but must leave an ID at the front desk.
- No equipment or manuals are allowed outside of the lab except cameras.
- Academic work has precedence over game play.
- Multiple copies of printouts are not allowed.
- No bikes can be stored inside the lab.
- No pets are allowed inside the lab.
- Students’ friends are not allowed to use the facility.
- Cell phone conversations are not allowed in the labs. Conversations should take place in the hallway.
Color Printing
Color printing is limited to the following:
- Free color printing is available for final versions of assignments that are COURSE RELATED.
- Color print jobs must be given (on media) to a User Assistant at the main desk for printing.
- Print jobs will be handled as quickly as possible. There are times when the front desk (especially around class times) may be too busy to provide immediate turn around.
- Only color pages will be printed, not black and white pages. It is the users responsibility to separate the color pages from the document.
Unattended Computers
To ensure the efficient use of lab resources, computers should not be left unattended for more than 20 minutes. Exceptions can be made for tasks such as rendering, which may require more time for completion.
If you need to leave a computer unattended for an extended period of
time, please ask a user assistant for help. User assistants will have
to fill out a form to keep your computer reserved while the task is in
progress. You should return within 20 minutes of the expected
completion time of the task.
Some long renders may need to be done overnight. If you wish to leave a computer running tasks overnight, please see a user assistant. Overnight renders are for class final projects only. Students must return to the lab no later than 10 am the next morning to save their project and free up the computers for other uses. It should be noted that overnight renders disrupt scheduled lab image updates, so please request this only for projects that require more than six hours of computer time.
Students should never place their own "Reserved" or "Do not Touch" signs on a computer.
Staff may not be able to honor all requests to reserve a computer. Image maintenance and classroom use take priority over reserve requests.
Multimedia Lab
This lab provides resources for multimedia-related projects. If you only need to access the Internet or use common applications such as Microsoft Office, please use our other labs such as the Macintosh lab in room 104, the PC labs in rooms 201 and 202, and the PC laptop lab in room L01.
Scratch disk. Files saved on the local drives, including the scratch disk, will be erased on a regular basis. Please make sure that you back up all of your work and data on your own external devices.
Rendering. If you need to occupy a computer for an extended period of time to render a project, please refer to our unattended computer policy above. For these cases, you will have to fill out a reserve form with the help of a user assistant.