Slashdot Mirror
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.
At my school, we kept PDFs of the student solutions manuals on the school network. This was probably a violation of copyright law, but it's an effective countermeasure to being charged $40 for a tiny paperback book.
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...
What you are looking for is consumer-to-consumer sales software. This is often done with an auction model. However, most technologies to do C2C are patented out the you-know-whatse in many jurisdictions, either by eBay or by the latest holding company to sue eBay.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Take a look at MySQLauction.
Freshmeat is also a good startting point.
Links to cheap textbooks
Perhaps politics and bureaucracy are the main roadblocks to creating something like this instead of html, cgi, and perl.
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!
In my first two years I faithfully bought my books from either the campus bookstore or the student union run bookstore (student's consign their books)
Then I discovered Chapters (Maybe Amazon is the same) would order almost anything. Of course there was a week or two waiting period but when you are talking $63.50 versus $118.95 it is worth it.
So if your prof. insists on using new books or has to have the latest edition, don't forget book stores. Even smaller ones can sometimes order in texts, you just have to pay in advance because they can't sell it to normal people if you don't buy.
How dare you say we (association of campus book stores) are overcharging students? You piece of shit! We're charging a fair price so you pampered little fuckers getting subsidized education on public dimes (mine included, but not willingly or happily so). You ingrate! I see you little pricks come in the store and I just know 99% of you weasels will amount to NOTHING despite your silver spoon fed pampered ass getting a paid education by daddy and taxpayer. If you don't like paying for the books, just photocopy them from a friend (not like you're buying music or movies now anyway, you copyright violating little fucks), or better yet, pay to have your papers written on your behalf and your exam grades altered.
You people make me sick! In fact, I'm almost tempted to bring a loaded semi-automatic with me to work tomorrow and see how fast I can make you fuckers run.
As recently mentioned on this very site:
www.communitybooks.org
But subverting one of the university's ways of making money just means they have to raise tuition...they'll get it from somewhere.
I feel it would be more relevant, realistic, and admirable to instead try to get your university to divert less funds into the sports programs, and more into academia.
Chris
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
UK Based Book Exchange Very good, Very free.
I spent ages trying to think of sig, but never did
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.
Two things.
First I recommend people check with their local used book store. Some of them throw away textbooks.
Second my school would change the books used every semester to "combat" this recycling. (Oh they would never say that to your face)
I'm glad to see your college education was successful enough for you to still be completely oblivious to the fact that the vast majority of university tuition financing is through private finace -- student loans are almost always merely guaranteed by the government but not a single dime of your-hard-earned-tax-dollars are spent. The fact that it is subsidized in very limited circumstances (extreme financial need or extreme academic achievement) is quickly mooted by the fact that most college graduates pay taxes the rest of their lives as their parents and children no doubt will..
What about getting Universities to use open content textbooks?
I know this isn't a viable idea just yet and that it won't help people who need a particular text book for what ever course but it would be nice to be able to learn something new and complex without having to pay a million private companies for the privilege.
(I wonder how many slashdot readers it would take to whip up a first rate textbook for C programming)
SPU also runs a similar service which, while I did not design, I was in charge of upkeeping for a year and had to do some fairly major rehauling. It's designed using ASP with an exchange database (I know, I know...), but it might be worth checking out:
http://199.237.180.240/be/
I might even have the source for the asp pages, if anybody wants them. The main difficulty for a project like this though, is getting the word out. The best system is useless if 80% of students don't know about it. Whoever plans to undertake something like this should make sure they have a good advertising plan laid out.
Do not read this sig.
- 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
Stanford has something called "Bookshare".
It's student developed and student maintained. Basically, you sign up and then list any books you own but don't currently need. By searching through the combined listings, you can usually find copies of your required textbooks for free. Then you return them at the end of the quarter/semester.
share.stanford.edu is the general site, and it includes subsections for books, music and movies.
I've used it myself and found the textbook library very useful. The textbook library is linked to the current course offerings, so it all works quite efficiently.
Great clean user interface, and a simple concept. Could serve as a great model for an opensource effort, in my opinion.
At uni, we had this highly advanced object oriented system called a notice board. Students with books to sell instantiated a notice object (potentially sub-classed to add funcionality such as tear off phone numbers strips) and a drawing pin object. Combine the two with the singleton class noticeboard object and you have an advert.
Don't by the recommended books, because they won't help. Seriously, unless the prof actually teaches straight out of the book (in which case, why take the class -- you can learn it by yourself), you shouldn't need them. Instead, listen in class and take good notes.
My experience (and I've had plenty in higher education) is that it's almost always more helpful to buy books NOT on the lecturer's list. Why? Because most lecturers recommend books that present things in the same way they teach them (ie they recommend the books they base their courses on). So if there's something you don't understand in class, a book won't help if it explains things in the same way.
As a maths/physics student I found the Dover series to be great. Cheap (under $10 a few years back), student-level texts by authors whose understanding of the subject far exceeds that of most lecturers. Schrodinger on quantum mechanics, Einstein on relativity, Fermi on thermodynamics, Lanczos on classical mechanics...They might not be of much direct help with problem sets, but they're great for giving insights into the subject. They do have a couple of drawbacks, though -- in some subjects they can be out of date (so you're safe with most maths and undergrad physics, not so good on genetics...). The other one is that they often assume quite a lot of knowledge about related subjects, which means you then have to buy another Dover book on that etc. But that's part of the fun.
The author of this post asserts his moral rights.
As a professor, I can tell you that we feel captive to the publishers. For first-year surveys they have a deliberate policy of issuing new editions of textbooks every two years or less! With new paginations, new chapters and no availability of the older editions from warehouses, you pretty much have to bite the bullet and go with the new to ensure there are enough texts on hand for your freshman class.
And the reason that upper year course books change often can be two-fold. One is that the professor is just as disappointed as you (often having adopted the text sight unseen six months before the start of classes). The other common problem with text carryover is different professor teach much different courses under the same title. Some department get around this by adopting a standard text for shared classes, but that usually only applies to the more general, lower-level courses.
There are some cost-effective options -- custom readers from publishers like Pearson in my field are amazingly cheap. With their material, I've put together a tutorial reader covering an entire term for 21.95 US. That's less than half the cost of a lousy course package photocopy set put together by our monopolistic bookstore.
ancarett, historian and zombie gamer
For everyone here who complains about college text prices, how many have actually WORKED in a a college bookstore? It's easy to accuse of price-gouging when you have no understanding of how the industry actually works. The biggest offenders are the publishers, not the stores.
When a new textbook package comes with worthless CDs (or in one case, 3D glasses!!) advertised as "free add-ons", it achieves several things. First, by only making these worthless packages available instead of the book by itself, the publisher can basically force professors and students to buy new editions every year. Second, it can then raise the price liberally to account for the so-called "free" material. Publishers HATE used books, and go to some odd lengths to prevent used copies from being viable for very long.
Yeah, high prices suck. I have to pay them too. However, at least I know who is really at fault when I do.
How about fewer questions and more shut the hell up???
1. Don't buy new books right off the bat. This should be obvious. You can get it used later on, or you might find out that the textbook for the course has changed or it's gone to a new version. Profs won't expect you to have the texts on the first day, or not even the first week when you're in first year.
2. Don't put your trust in any heavily advertised "We'll buy your used textbooks" program. They'll pay you $15 for a $90 textbook and then sell it for $67.50.
3. Do find out who the professor of your course is. And then compare your knowledge with the knowledge of the people who took it last year. If it's the same professor then you can probably dive into the used book market. If not, wait until you get the course outline or other official piece of information and get the actual title and volume, and then you'll know if the people with the used books have what you want.
4. If you are trying to get your books early and can't get a course outline to find out what book will be used for a course, then try scouting the 'official' bookstores because they usually know well in advance and have everything labelled in their stock supplies on the shelves. I always go on a scouting trip in early september with a notepad and take notes on prices to make sure people selling used books aren't selling above the retail prices. (This does happen once in a while.) On this scouting trip, I usually end up explaining to some first year kid and their parents why they should put down that $500 stack of books and wait for used books.
5. One you are sure of what books you actually do need, then make it your religion to scour those used books boards (online or not) and if you see something you want, then phone them up instantly and pick it up.
6. When you have all your books, don't go writing in them or whatnot. You want to have them keep their value so you can sell then for $5 less in the next semester. Remember that you can sell a used book for almost exactly the same as you got it (or probably even more) but with new books, your profit ceiling is probably only 75% of the retail price since the 'official' store's supply of used books is generally priced at this level.
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.