Spooling is a process of temporarily storing data for use and execution by a device, program, or system. It is a specialized form of multi-programming used for copying data between different devices. Spooling makes use of a buffer known as SPOOL, which is used to hold off jobs and data until the device in which the SPOOL is created is ready to use and execute the job or operate on the data. Spooling is a combination of buffering and queuing. The spool itself refers to the sequence of jobs, or the storage area where they are held. The most common use of spooling is printing, where documents formatted for printing are stored in a queue at the speed of the computer, then retrieved and printed at the speed of the printer. Spooling is also used to mediate access to punched card readers and punches, magnetic tape drives, and other slow, sequential I/O devices. It allows the application to run at the speed of the CPU while operating peripheral devices at their full rated speed. Batch processing systems also use spooling to maintain a queue of ready-to-run jobs, which can be started as soon as the system has the resources to process them.