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Posts tagged ‘books’

Aug 23

Textbook Time

It’s textbook time. Every semester, you got get them hardbacks. Here’s a quick guide to getting your books for classes at Middlebury. Yes, we believe in reducing costs.

STEP ONE: Choose your classes

Chances are you’re going to switch classes within the first week. It happens and it’s a good thing. But that means you shouldn’t get too ambitious about getting books right now. Hedge your bets and maybe get books for the classes you know you’re going to take or have to take. Otherwise, you may benefit from waiting.

STEP TWO: What books?

The best method is to email your professors to ask for a booklist now. I’d say most professors already know 90% of the books they will assign and already have syllabi written up. Many have submitted their lists to the Bookstore. You can see those lists and search for your courses. Take note of the ISBN numbers and used/new price that the Bookstore will be offering. Note that the Professor will be more accurate than the Bookstore. Sometimes the professor adds the book to the Bookstore too late and so the bookstore lists may be a little dated. Still, it’s a good place to start.

STEP THREE: Renting vs. Buying vs. Borrowing vs. Digital

Here’s where things get tricky and people have a lot of opinions. Renting textbooks from places like Chegg.com is increasingly common and a fairly cheap option that remains flexible. Still, a lot of students like to keep textbooks and some books can be used in multiple classes over one’s college career. Even the College Bookstore is trying out rentals. Buying books at the Bookstore, though, is still the most common. The Bookstore has what you need and it’s available immediately most of the time. The prices are sometimes crazily above what you’d get online but not always. Most often, books are $5-10 over the price you’d find online. For most students, that premium is worth it for convenience. Buying online will be cheaper, but you don’t always know what you’re getting. Be sure to search sites like Amazon.com or Half.com with your ISBN number, not just title. This ensures you get the right edition. Shipping to you is the main challenge of buying online. This year, Amazon.com is offering free two-day shipping for students with .edu email address. Works wonders when you have to get that book immediately. It’ll be even cheaper still if you buy used online but shipping timeframes can be quite varied. I know some folks will have Kindles/Nooks/etc. — good for you, check if your books are available digitally first. Finally, the smart kids also check if books are in the College libraries — borrowing on reserve or for the semester can save you lots of money if you can navigate the library system.

STEP FOUR: Anticipate Post-Semester

At the beginning of the semester, no one thinks about what they want to do with their books after they’re done with the class. But think about — sell books online? sell books back to the Bookstore? Keep the books? If you have an idea of what you want to do after, it might help you decide whether you buy, rent, or borrow now.

Former MiddBlog lead editor Emily put it in fewer words last year talking further about luxury of Panther Points and the artist-formerly-known-as-bookstore-bob. Another great resource for all of this with many more links is over at lifehacker.com.

Mar 2

1 Comment

Are you going to be in the yearbook?

This year’s edition of Middlebury’s yearbook Kaleidoscope is already in production, and the money for it spent. The only question at this point is, will your face be in it?

You can upload your face picture (and others) on the yearbook’s photo upload website using the login information sent to your email, or you can ask kaleidoscope@middlebury.edu.

Despite my personal skepticism of whether or not this yearly publication in its current form is right for Midd (see below), I’ve submitted my picture. Here’s a list of reasons that you might do the same…

  • POST-GRAD LOVE LIFE, PLAN B. Senior crush lists don’t always work. Maybe your Proctor crush is too alternative for Facebook. Adding your most flattering picture to the yearbook increases your chances–from zero to slightly higher-than-zero–that the lucky gal or guy will stumble across your face in just in time for your 5th reunion weekend….
  • Obama's yearbook pictureYOUR FACE (IN PRINT!). Yes, a bit vain, perhaps, but user-edited Web media completely takes the fun out of seeing oneself on the Internet. Who doesn’t get a little kick out of seeing your name or face in print?
  • RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE 2010s. If I had posted a picture of myself like the one to the right on FB, and then found out I was going to be U.S. president a few decades later, I probably would have untagged it or deleted it long before the fact. Having a concrete freeze-frame of your 2010 hairdo and granola Vermont style will force you to take a bit of ownership for the good ol’ days in front of your kids.
  • MAKING THE MOST OF IT. You don’t decide exactly how your tax dollars are spent, but you still benefit in some respect from the programs and security that they buy. Likewise, if you disagree with the yearbook, it will nonetheless be published in June with the label “Middlebury College 2009-2010.” If you were a part of that, it seems a waste of your student activities money not to be included.

What’s there to disagree about? Last March, MiddBlog posted on why Middlebury doesn’t need a yearbook. To recap the reasoning, still valid from its original posting a year ago:

  • Publishing a yearbook is expensive, especially as it’s provided “free” to seniors (they’ve paid into the student activities feed coffers for four years, and get a part of that back in the form of the book).
  • It isn’t a well-known part of Middlebury graduation tradition.
  • Documenting everything from an entire year at a busy place like Midd seems impossible.
  • Most of all, perhaps, Facebook and the Web partially replace the need for the extra 200 pages of photos sitting on your shelf 10, 25, 50 years from now. Ditching the yearbook for FB ruins the sentimental part of it, but on the upside would save a tree or two.

As much as I support participating in the current yearbook, I also think discussing the yearbook’s future should continue. It’s a large sum of money being spent, going towards a publication that many say (today) that they’re against.

MiddBlog wants to know. What’s your take? Is a Midd yearbook worth the money? Will you value a yearbook down the road, or is Facebook the answer? How should the idea of a yearbook adapt to the “social media age”? Does DePauw University have it right?

Nov 17

Library Book Sale

From the LIS Blog:

Tuesday, November 17th – Sunday, November 22nd, Main Library

Open at 9:00 AM on first day, continuing during regular library open hours thereafter.

LIBRARY BOOK SALE–  The Middlebury College Main Library will offer withdrawn and duplicate copies of books, VHS tapes, and other media for sale at great prices. Choose from a wide variety of items for scholarly work or recreational reading and viewing.  All proceeds from the sale will be added to the library’s materials replacement fund. (Because the low price asked for materials is in part a service to the college community, anyone purchasing items on the first day of the sale will be required to show a Middlebury College ID.)

Jan 28

Spring Booklists Available Now

Ladies and gentlemen, finally…

Spring Booklists from the Bookstore

The interface, while not the prettiest, works pretty slick for checking out the cost of your spring books (so then you can go home over feb break and ask your parents for some dolladollabillsya (thanks, Wyclef) to pay for it all). You can’t buy them online from the Bookstore…yet (I’m sure that’s a future feature). But you can print out your booklists and enter the ISBNs into Amazon for comparison’s sake. Better yet, check out MiddBookSearch.com and then hit up Amazon or Half.com. If you order online now, then your books will ship in time for the start of your classes in two weeks. Go for it!

I am all for getting books the cheapest possible, but hear me out, if the Bookstore price comes within a few dollars or cents of Amazon or whatever, I think supporting the Bookstore with your business is great. Even if you may not jive with Bookstore Bob Jansen’s Facebook advertisements, it’s worth supporting your school if they can come even  close to competing with the Interwebs. Putting the booklists online has been several years in the making, so send your thank-you notes to Bookstore Bob.

Jan 13

3 Comments

MiddBookSearch.com

A lot of administrators ask me, why things like MiddCal exist when there is an administrative solution in place. It’s a student-driven solution to a common student problem — keeping track of student activities on a busy busy campus. My Econ classes teach me that where there is demand, there should be supply to meet that demand. And students are finding ways of supplying solutions, when there are needs not being met.

MiddBookSearch.com is “designed as a place to trade/sell/buy books locally around Middlebury.” William Martin ’11 has created this tool out of the goodness of his own heart as a way to meet the demand for local book transactions and in particular textbook purchases student-to-student. As he mentions, the site “is meant to be used as a tool to contact others who are trying to sell the books you need” instead of actually paying on the site a la Amazon or eBay.

I stumbled upon the site a few months ago only to dismiss it as not having enough user-base to work. But now, the website with an awkward three-word title, boasts 242 books from numerous students looking to offload their books locally to other Middlebury (often student) buyers. The interface is simple and well integrated with fantastic tools like ISBN searching (which helps keep listing accurate). Search works flawlessly. Design has no-ads, no frills, just books. I often list my books to sell on Amazon or Half.com, but I’m willing to sell locally for a lower price than online because it saves me the time of shipping books across the country to buyers in Utah.

I unhesitatingly recommend MiddBookSearch.com for students to list and buy books for the Spring semester. If Middlebury is truly that tight-knit, small community we proport to be, then this type of service should be adopted and promoted widely by everyone from the SGA to the Libary and even to the Bookstore. Furthermore, students should be encouraged to persue projects like this because it solves immediate problems. And when administrators and faculty see these “startups,” they should encourge these entrepreneurial students to help improve the institutional solutions too.

Middkids are talented people and finding the right people to both brainstorm and implement solutions for our local community is meaningful. It’s one thing for students to whine about problems (like we do here on MiddBlog) and it’s another to find the right students to help build solutions to those problems. The SGA is half-way there with MiddBay.com, a more general exchange website for Midd students that has a design right out of the 90′s. The idea is there, but it lacks the implementation to make it useful. Students need to convince other students that investing time and energy to work on issues in our community is meaningful and worth it.

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