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University Textbook Exchange Software
PageMap writes "With the textbook-buying season upon us, many universities and student organizations are attempting to combat the on-campus bookstore's overcharging by starting up their own grassroots book exchange efforts. The problem is the seeming lack of available web-based software to facilitate an efficient book exchange. Is there such a thing as free web-based software made for this type of use?"
I'm not sure if it's free or not, but the University of Texas has a book exchange. I've never used it personally, but I know people who have and they've always been satisfied with it.
IAALS.
Why not just set up a BBS/forum? Plenty of free ones exist (phpBB, phorum being the two most popular), and a little moderation and regulation (i.e. one forum has offers, one side has requests), you could easily have an alternative to the campus bookstore.
"Why Subscribe?" Good question...
Take a look at MySQLauction.
Freshmeat is also a good startting point.
Links to cheap textbooks
Called Amazon.com Marketplace. Gotta have a checking account to sell and a valid credit card to buy. Reasonable prices and scam-free transactions (if you're a seller), although Bezos does take a 10% cut of the sale.
I had about 3 orders come in this weekend for the books that have been on the shelves and listed on Amazon.com used market for 2 months or so.
A Member of the Rutgers University Student Linux Users Group has created just such a thing here at RU using PHP and MySQL. The site is hosted on our server here:
http://ruslug.rutgers.edu/bookswap/
I'm not completely familiar with the project - there's an "about this site" page, but no real mention of a license in regards to the php scripts being used. The author's link is on the about page - try emailing him.
Hope that helps and good luck sticking it to those bastards at efollet who, whether you know it yet or not, probably run your school's bookstore!
As recently mentioned on this very site:
www.communitybooks.org
We have one that was designed by our WWW Interest Group here on campus: wig.uark.edu/bookswap
There's also Come Get Used over here at Berkeley.
Hi. Our uni (UT-Dallas) put this together. Hi B/M. :^)
Demo site:
http://olbe.studentgov.com/
Project page:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/bookex/
Have fun. These seem to be reasonably successful implementations.
--Robert
for New York State Universities
http://www.sunyexchange.com
A bunch of us at UIUC started one too (ABSOLUTELY FREE):
Illini Book Exchange, and we WANT to share our code and expand to other universities.
We've started atleast 4 other book exchanges at other universities recently (Cornell being one of them).
Here are some numbers
(Basically in 8 months, ~$100,000 worth of trades, over 2000 users and 2500 trades).
So, if you want us to help just get a hold of us through: here.
They claim it takes 60 sec to make your textbooks available via their Used Textbooks section. Worth trying to sell one or two just to see how it works.
Help fight continental drift.
Put your books for sale on Amazon and buy your new books from amazon used as well. Not only do you get a far better selling price but you also get to buy and sell directly to other students rather than having to deal with the nasty campus bookstore.
They already have a lot of users and you get a better market that trying to sell just to students at your tiny liberal arts school.
Do what I did: I listed all my textbooks on Amazon marketplace and Half.com at the same time. When one sold one one site I pulled it from the other. In the end I made enough money to buy my new books from Amazon/Half used from other students.
During the past year, on campus there have been three student attempts to tap the textbook market, of which two were textbook exchanges that involved commissions. (The other was an attempt in half.com arbitrage.) Only a textbook exchange has survived, though it had to change its name after the University threatened a lawsuit over copyrights. There are 641 books listed, but I'm not sure if any are actually moving.
At my University, Most of the classes have brand new books(none are less than a hundread dollars) every semester. This is too keep people from buying cheeper used books or getting FREE books from classmates who already took the class.
- BU Books
- BearSwap
- Baylor Information Network (click on Community)
As you can see, here at Baylor we have a few options to choose from -- more choices mean better pricesSic 'Em Bears!
This is my digital signature. 10011011001
That's a common myth...even ESPN states the fact that only a select handful of schools make money off of sports. Most are far into the red, trying to keep up with the marketing/recruitment of the more successful schools...
Chris
TexBooks
An alternate site is UT Life. I like UT Life's organization of class histories and professor reviews, like Pick a Prof, but they don't charge for access. Check their book swap section.
The people behind UT Life even emailed me when I was mentioned in The Daily Texan when they made the cover. Nice.
Check out store.doverpublications.com, especially the sections of scientific monographs and musical scores.
They have a large collection of reprints of famous textbooks at very low price.
See also
http://mit411.com
I looked at this too. I recommend zClassifieds by xgra http://www.xgra.com . It is great classifieds system that is also available as a PHP-NUKE and postnuke module. Why is this the best?
1) Ads can be set to automatically expire
2) easy to categorize books by classes or subjects
3) easy for users to modify, change, cancel ads
4) program is free
Search google for zclassifieds for examples.
I don't think auctions are the best way to sell text books. Usually students need these books regardless, so they want to know they'll get the book and not want to wait around for auctions to end.
Second, you did not actually follow the link. It points to the Wiki-Textbook project, which is independent from Wikipedia.
I work at my college store too, and you're 100% right. Publishers won't even sell you a textbook by itself anymore a lot of the time. They only come with CDs/DVDs/online subscription cards in a lot of cases now. A prof wants this book, and when we order it it comes with all this crap that the professor probably doesn't need but the publisher won't sell it to us without. And of course it can't be returned without all the crap.
:-P
But nobody ever bothers to find out the facts before just bashing the bookstore for gouging the students, when our base markup on textbooks is 25%. I think it should be a little less personally, but it IS a business after all, and businesses make money. However, compare this to the markup on gifts and clothing, which is more like 70%. This is where bookstores make the REAL money! All those $39.95 sweatshirts? Our cost on those is probably just over $20. So pass the blame around
The Distributed Library Project as discussed here might be a good option. The software itself can be found at Thoughtcrime.org
There is an open source, free portal program for university use called SINapse. You can find it here www.sinapse.org. It offers a book exchange module and its released under the GPL
For a perfect example, look at the University of Minnesota as they raise tuition by $1000 per year, while building seperate stadiums for each of their major sports teams. That is why I left that school, I refuse to subsidise the team-of-the-year's new stadium.
There is a great book exchange site available for Canadian Universities, check out http://www.canadabookswap.com. Cheers
Here, here! It is definitely the publisher's fault. I've worked as a student employee at North Dakota State's Varsity Mart Bookstore, and I know that the high prices are the fault of the publisher. Our store only marks things up enough to pay freight costs, labor costs, and space rent to the Union. If they do make a profit (and I think that's probably only on supplies, clothes, and tradebooks), the University uses it to pay off debts for new construction. (One local school, I think it's Minnesota State University-Moorhead will actually begin returning profits to students as dividends based on how much they purchase each year starting this fall.)
Publishers are out to make money and hate, hate, hate used books. Thus, they come out with oodles of packages with worthless CDs or website access codes or quickly-replaceable flimsy materials. Our bookstore usually works with profs to get around most of the package things. (Bookstore: "Do you really need the CD?" Prof.: "There's a CD with the book? No, they don't need that thing." is the usual conversation.) However, we have one prof who writes the Intro to Public Speaking text for our campus who thinks she needs a new edition every single year. However, I honestly think that we're going to get the administration to put a stop to that in the near future.
One reason that campus bookstores often wind up ripping students off is that they are placed within the Business/Finance branch of the University. A couple years ago, they moved the VMart under Student Affairs, and there have been a lot more used books in the store since then. They're under strict orders from the administration to get as many used books as possible. (Oh, pricing is sell used at 75% of new price, buy back (if needed for the next term) at 60% of new price, so it's a good deal for students, except when going wholesale to MBS, Nebraska Book Company, Budgetext, or Follet, based on who's there for that buy.) Of course, buying used books from the wholesalers pisses the publishers off, and they'll often threaten to withhold ancillaries (instructor's edition, test bank, transparencies, etc.) from the adopting department. This year, our math department switched to a different text for Intro to Ordinary Differential Equations, and the bookstore got about 160 used, which was all they needed. Of course, the publisher (Thomson) got upset and basically forced the store to order 25 new copies, which I'm sure they'll be promptly returning once all the books are purchased this fall.
In summary, don't blame the bookstore until you've been on the inside. Don't blame the profs, unless they're writing the book or getting kickbacks (see an article in the June Chronicle of Higher Education) from the publishers, they've got your best interest at heart. Buy online when possible, but watch out ofr those crappy paperback international editions. Finally, BLAME THE PUBLISHERS! (Except Springer Verlag, publisher of many excellent, reasonably priced mathematics books.)
"You will only be remembered for two things: the problems you solve or the ones you create." Mike Murdock
Cheggpost.com
I have used it myself many times, and have saved lots of money. I really despise our university bookstore, so I try not to go there as much as possible.
Otherwise, I buy my books online from Half.com or Ecampus.com.
It's slightly off-topic, but you should be aware that there are some online textbook catalogs that have been smoking made crack.
Case in point?
BookCentral.com, where you can get "Brand New Textbooks [at] Used prices".
Apparently, for them used prices mean offering books at 140-170% of list price.
Here's an example:
Flatland's list price is $30 (according to Amazon). BookCentral has it for a mere $43.02. Wow!
See? The campus bookstore isn't all that bad, really.
Karma: Chevy Kavalierma.