Inkjets are tempting if you don't print many documents because the initial cost is pretty low. And ink cartridges also tend to be low cost compared to toner at the unit level. Laser printers take up more space too.
The problem is if you don't print a lot, the cartridges dry out, and the ink clogs in the printer and whatever else, leading to a big pain.
The Xerox Phaser solid ink printers produced really pretty images. It's a shame they are discontinued. I think you can still buy the ink blocks but they are probably going to phase them out.
That reminds me of a funny story. A previous employer had replaced a bunch of ancient HP LaserJets (we're talking LJ4s.. they were old) with these really nice Phasers. They printed fast, the output was gorgeous, and the drivers didn't suck. The replacement was facility-wide, so there were around 20 of these things.
A month later, IT was tasked with re-replacing them for everyone but marketing overnight. Literally overnight, as in, we're paying overtime for this. The boss didn't know what was happening until a week later, but it was a fire drill of an intensity that you usually don't see outside of a full outage.
It turned out that, while the Phasers do generate gorgeous hardcopy, the wax-like prints, can, with some effort, some skill, and a sharp knife, be popped off the page. A customer figured this out and had been effectively stealing service by way of paying invoices with numbers quite literally pulled off the page. The old Laserjets were placed back into service everywhere but the marketing group.
I paid like £30 for used laser colour printer couple of years ago and I've been printing a lot since then. Never had to buy any toner or other maintenance products, except for paper.
If your library doesn't have a print service you can use a Kinkos instead. It's more expensive, but if you only print once in a blue moon it's cheaper and less hassle than an inkjet (which will be all dried out or the cartridge will be empty from running the nozzle cleaning cycle every few days) when you need it that second time.
Laser printers can sit idle much longer but they're bulky and sometimes energy hogs.
I live in Chicago and there's a bunch of FedEx shops a bus ride away. They all have self-serve pay-per-page printers, just bring in a USB drive with whatever you want to print.
On top of those, a few months ago I found a PrintWithMe [0] station at a corner store that's only a 5 minute walk away.
The problem is if you don't print a lot, the cartridges dry out, and the ink clogs in the printer and whatever else, leading to a big pain.