University Textbook Exchange Software 324
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?"
UT has one (Score:5, Informative)
Re:UT has one (Score:3, Informative)
AC
Re:UT has one (Score:3, Informative)
quite cool, but seems kinda lacking for some reason that I can't quite place. I used half.com to sell my books and to buy one of them. I recieved fair prices for them. and was quite convient
Re:UT has one (Score:4, Informative)
That site is long over due for an upgrade and redesign. The updated version of the code running that site can be found: http://bookex.sf.net [sf.net]
For a good example of how the code can be easily customized, check out: http://www.epccemployees.com/ [epccemployees.com]
Baylor is all up in this one: (Score:4, Informative)
Sic 'Em Bears!
Stanford's Bookshare (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [stanford.edu] is the general site, and it includes subsections for books [stanford.edu], music [stanford.edu] and movies [stanford.edu].
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.
Seems Easy (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Seems Easy (Score:2, Insightful)
Why not use the blood sucking immoral capitistic programs provided by the free market?
Are you talking legally or illegally? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Are you talking legally or illegally? (Score:2)
Forum? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Forum? (Score:5, Insightful)
There are also purdue.forsale.housing, purdue.forsale.computer, and purdue.forsale.misc.
I use them all the time to get stuff. I built my computer off of parts I obtained from the newsgroups, actually.
Easily searchable, fast because it runs off the schools servers (which I use to access it). I imagine there's something like that at a lot of schools, and there are just lots of students who don't know about it.
No. (Score:4, Insightful)
What you are looking for is consumer-to-consumer sales software. This is often done with an auction model [ebay.com]. 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.
Auction software (Score:5, Informative)
Freshmeat [freshmeat.net] is also a good startting point.
In the meantime.. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:In the meantime.. (Score:2)
Creating a Monster (Score:5, Interesting)
Perhaps politics and bureaucracy are the main roadblocks to creating something like this instead of html, cgi, and perl.
Re:Creating a Monster (Score:3, Interesting)
Or perhaps, natural economic forces? Lots of students who absolutely have to purchase a given item, and few (or in many cases, one practical) sources of supply.
Rules for Textbook Acquisition (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Rules for Textbook Acquisition (Score:3, Funny)
Me: "Hi there, I'm looking for the textbook for INSY 3300"
Bkstr: "Ok, that'd be this book. It's $90.00 new and $89.00 used"
Me: "Great! Could I get the ISBN number for that book?"
Bkstr: "No. We don't quote ISBNs and other info like that over the phone"
Me: "
Yes (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re:Yes (Score:2)
Rutgers Used Book Swap (Score:5, Informative)
http://ruslug.rutgers.edu/bookswap/ [rutgers.edu]
I'm not completely familiar with the project - there's an "about this site" [rutgers.edu] 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 [efollet.com] who, whether you know it yet or not, probably run your school's bookstore!
Seattle Pacific Book Exchange (Score:4, Interesting)
http://199.237.180.240/be/ [199.237.180.240]
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.
Re:Rutgers Used Book Swap (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Rutgers Used Book Swap (Score:2, Informative)
This link is to a book swapping site my cousin and I whipped up in PHP and MySQL for students at our university. For being just a small effort, it actually has attracted quite a bit of attention- we've had an article about the site in the school newspaper as well as the city newspaper that got picked up by the AP and printed all over the country. We've just recently been sponsered by the student government who is now paying for the webhosting, domain name, and any other cost
Re:Rutgers Used Book Swap (Score:2)
Re:Rutgers Used Book Swap (Score:2)
I wrote that thing!
I have the source if anyone wants it, although I
It was a personal project, actually, since one of the first times I was exposed to Linux doing something useful was a perl and postgresql installation doing something vaguely similar. (I haven't managed to find the cool embroidered patch banner/button that they used for Linux at the bottom of their page, though. Anyone have it?)
Hey, sure. If anyone wants the code, I can packa
Price gouging on-campus bookstore (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
:Price gouging on-campus bookstore-Recycling. (Score:3, Insightful)
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)
Re:Price gouging on-campus bookstore (Score:3, Insightful)
Have some respect! (Score:4, Funny)
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.
Have some ritalin (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Have some respect! (Score:2)
Yes, most of my tuition was paid for by outside help, but MOST of that was student loans that I had to pay later. There were some grants and scholarships. I had to kick in about 20% up front, meaning that I had to earn that money while going to school.
As for overcharging bookstores, it may very well be true, but with my bookstore, I would compare with Amazon.com and other stores and come out ab
Re:Calm Down! (Score:2)
True. It's the policies of the publishers. That's what they get the big bucks for. Thinkin up ways to stretch the dollar they make on a book.
The average campus bookstore has very minimal margins, especially when it comes to stu
DIY (Score:2)
Re:DIY (Score:3, Insightful)
It is a fairly simple procedure, but if you don't know about code why don't you stop telling people to do it themselves. It's obviously outside of your grasp, and if you think that 1,000 lines of C code could come close I'll pay you a dollar a line to come up with a complete P2P book selling server with client software that is cross platform.
Re:DIY (Score:2)
Re:While it's certainly possible, I wouldn't want (Score:2)
Re:While it's certainly possible, I wouldn't want (Score:2)
Re:While it's certainly possible, I wouldn't want (Score:2)
Hey, that's really cool. Any way I could see the source code?
Re:DIY (Score:2)
That'll be $999 please. I'll get that software to you by the end of the day.
Re:DIY (Score:2)
i don't know that I'd do this in C, most of my cgi was done with perl. I'd be willing to take up this project if I had more time and if the last cgi I wrote wasn't a few years back yet.
It doesn't need to be more complex than the user needs it to be.
Distributed Library Project (Score:3, Informative)
www.communitybooks.org
not that I like it... (Score:5, Insightful)
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
Re:not that I like it... (Score:2, Funny)
Not going to happen (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Not going to happen (Score:4, Informative)
Chris
Re:Not going to happen (Score:2)
Re:Not going to happen (Score:3, Insightful)
Here's coverage of the NCAA report by the Miami Herald [miami.com]
Re:Not going to happen (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Not going to happen (Score:3, Insightful)
Instead they conduct a study that indicates that most college sports LOSE money. That tells me they have a degree of integrity.
I too have seen lots of report indicating that VERY few programs actually make money. The best money-maker is typically Men's basketball with it's low number of athletes and high attendance. For perennia power schools (Notre Dame, Michiga
Re:not that I like it... (Score:2)
You say that it's cool for the university to hide some of its tuition in the form of overcharging for books?!? Universities get large amounts of moneys from donors and the government (in civilized places). Nickel and diming the students isn't the solution to any financial shortfalls that they do have.
However I agree that lots of U's waste money on sports bigtime. Universities should be powerhouses of thought and innovation, better college sports doesn't make for any real pro
Re:not that I like it... (Score:2)
So that's what higher education is all about. I've always wondered.
Re:not that I like it... (Score:2, Insightful)
At most Universities (at least in the US), the bookstore, dining services, and (in most places) the housing department and sports teams are what's known as Auxilliary Services. They receive no money from the University, and must make their own profit. The only thing they receive is the right to associate themselves with the name of the institution.
At least here at UWM(.edu), these Auxilliary services don't even get to use the official University logo! They had to crea
Re:not that I like it... (Score:3, Insightful)
Just a thought, but it is something to think about
(no, i'm not racist, and yes, i support aa)
Re:not that I like it... (Score:3, Insightful)
Have you ever thought that maybe women aren't going the route of academia?
Yah, and all the reasons why--sexual harassment, the well-documented "chilly climate", a tenure clock that makes it easy for men with a stay-at-home wife to have children, but not female faculty, prejudices of women's ability to do science based on statistically insignificant differences in standardised tests that produce equal performance when womens' education is equal--add up to something between "unconscious" sex discrimina
U of A has one... (Score:3, Informative)
Berkeley Used Book Exchange (Score:3, Informative)
Book Exchange... (Score:5, Informative)
Demo site:
http://olbe.studentgov.com/
Project page:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/bookex/
Have fun. These seem to be reasonably successful implementations.
--Robert
Change the text each semester (Score:3, Interesting)
I still have my Economic Geology (ore deposits) text, and it is a joke. It had little to do with the course material and was useless as reference for finding economic minerals. It was a compilation of theoretical publications.
Fortunately, the prof also sold his lecture notes. Luckily, all the test questions came from the notes, so we all had a chance to pass the class.
Re:Change the text each semester (Score:2)
Re:Change the text each semester (Score:2)
Wow, glad no one ever told the people I bought used textbooks from about that one.
The favorite scam I ever saw played was when the prof would compile a list of sections from different books, take the infomation down the local Kinkos and have them do booklets for like $10.00. I seem to remember asking about how this was legal, he'd written a great deal of it, a lot of the information was PD and I think the rest fell under fair use. He'd even ha
Blame the Publishers (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [pearsoncustom.com] 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.
UK Book Exchange (Score:3, Interesting)
for New York State Universities (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.sunyexchange.com
University of Illinois has one too! (Score:4, Informative)
Illini Book Exchange [illinibookexchange.com], 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 [illinibookexchange.com]
(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. [illinibookexchange.com]
Sell/ Buy via Amazon.com (Score:2, Informative)
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.
Amazon (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Dogears.net (Score:2)
I for one... (Score:2, Funny)
(pssst...write your own software)
Anonymous? Not for me...I stand behind my comments!
Open textbooks. (Score:4, Interesting)
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)
Wikipedia? Not for this! (Score:2)
Texts that I use for intro courses in my field are written by teams of experts (to cover all the different specialties) and peer-reviewed by dozens of other professors. I agree they are too expensive, but at least they ha
Re:Wikipedia? Not for this! (Score:3, Informative)
Second, you did not actually follow the link. It points to the Wiki-Textbook project, which is independent from Wikipedia.
Re:Wikipedia? Not for this! (Score:2)
Actually that link was to the Wikibooks project which is a project separate to the Wikipedia (but part of the same overall group of projects). The idea with Wikibooks is to create "modules" little sections that can be gathered up and turned into textbooks (of course with copyediting, indexing, etc).
There are also other Wikimedia projects [wikimedia.org] underway.
Re:Open textbooks. (Score:2)
Examples (Score:2, Informative)
The scam of school books (Score:2, Informative)
UB's System (Score:3, Interesting)
ebay (Score:2)
PHPBB (Score:2)
Give each department its own section. Have users list the books by title, ISBN, and asking price.
Since the server is searchable, and browsable by department, people should have no trouble finding buyers/sellers.
illegal? (Score:2)
Re:illegal? (Score:2)
Not only that, but the bookstore profits go to the college, so if store profi
This is it! (Score:2)
highly advanced (Score:5, Funny)
http://mit411.com (Score:2, Informative)
http://mit411.com [mit411.com]
HSU (Score:2)
don't buy 'em (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
That "distributed Library" software (Score:2)
http://www.communitybooks.org/ has the software
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/08/24/1257 213&mode=thread&tid=185
Missing option (Score:2)
Oh, and tuition is $50/semester. Punishing people economically for wanting an education is just plain wrong.
Ever worked in a college store? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Ever worked in a college store? (Score:2, Informative)
But nobody ever bothers to find out the facts before just bashing the bookstore f
My university does it like this.... (Score:2, Funny)
Distributed Library Project as Posted (Score:2, Informative)
SINAPSE (Score:2, Informative)
ISU uses a web-based system (Score:4, Informative)
Cheggpost.com [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 [ecampus.com].
I've got one. 'textswap.com' (Score:3, Insightful)
You can use the site or download and install a single university version.
I've used it in the past, and was about to reinstall and promote our site. It works well.
"But what if I want to get shafted, mommy?" (Score:3, Informative)
Case in point?
BookCentral.com [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 [amazon.com]). BookCentral has it for a mere $43.02 [bookcentral.com]. Wow!
See? The campus bookstore isn't all that bad, really.
What query? (Score:2, Insightful)
The users are too lazy to type a couple of characters into Google
Too lazy, or too busy to take an hour experimenting with fruitless queries? Not everybody is enough of a Google master to get relevant results on the first, second, or third try. What keywords did you use in your query?
If they had been written in an object oriented language (such as C++) instead of Perl
Perl supports object orientation [manning.com], and so do Lisp and Python.
Re:This type of question can usually be answered b (Score:2)
Nonsense, OO design is difficult and people who code rubbish will produce OO rubbish as well. Of course Java rubbish is easier to understand than Perl rubbish.