Online exclusive: Alternative ways to get books can save buyers cash
By Jennie Herriot
June 22, 2003 9:00 p.m.
At universities across the country, expenses never seem to stop
piling up, and buying textbooks is no exception.
Along with online bookstores and auctioning forums, UCLA offers
ways for students to keep some textbook money in their pockets.
At the local level, students can purchase books from the UCLA
Store, located in Ackerman Union. Textbooks are also available on
UCLA’s online bookstore, where books can be preordered and
picked up in Ackerman before classes begin.
The MyUCLA Web site and bruinwalk.com offer alternatives to
shopping on campus, with online message boards where students can
buy and sell textbooks.
Bruinwalk.com launched its book exchange last fall, and it has
seen a great deal of success, said former director of bruinwalk.com
and recent computer science graduate Avishai Shraga.
UCLA students can log onto bruinwalk.com’s book exchange
with their Bruin Online IDs and passwords.
Students don’t have to “pay an exorbitant amount for
books” when they use bruinwalk.com, Shraga said, as the book
exchange gives students the opportunity to compare different
sellers’ prices.
Another added convenience is that students can meet buyers and
sellers on campus, avoiding shipping fees that come with purchasing
from other Web sites.
“It’s much more intimate and trusted,” he
said.
Shraga said he uses the bruinwalk.com book exchange himself,
sometimes selling books.
“When I’ve posted my books, I’ve had offers
that day,” he said, adding that he sometimes has several
offers to choose from.
Shraga added that the book exchange is better designed for the
buying and selling of textbooks than the MyUCLA marketplace forum,
which was not designed specifically for the purpose of exchanging
textbooks.
The MyUCLA Web site allows student to access forums, where they
can post books they want to buy or sell in the marketplace
category.
Amanda Sarkis, a first-year undeclared student, said she rarely
buys or sells textbooks through the UCLA Store. Sarkis said
alternatives such as my.ucla or online bookstores can be more
cost-effective, whether buying or selling.
“I sell them for like four or five times what the school
would pay,” Sarkis said.
She said the only disadvantage to selling textbooks on MyUCLA or
bruinwalk.com is if a class isn’t offered the following
quarter, no one will buy the book.
Sarkis said she also shops at Textbooks Plus on Westwood
Boulevard, and has gotten good deals on textbooks from amazon.com
and half.com, an offshoot of eBay whose focus is on books.
Operated by the Undergraduate Students Association
Council’s Financial Supports Commission, another resource for
students is the campus Book Lending Program.
The program lends textbooks to students for free, and students
who are eligible for this program include those who receive
financial aid and those who are employed, according to the
commission’s Web site.
The UCLA library system also sometimes keeps textbooks for
specific courses on reserve at its libraries.
Librarian Pauline Swartz said students can find out if the
textbooks for their classes are available at Powell Library by
checking online.
Textbooks on reserve can be checked out for a couple of hours or
a few days, depending on the professor and the class, she
added.
Powell Library puts textbooks on reserve for 250 to 300 classes
each quarter, said Richard Jones, who is in charge of the
library’s reserves.
Jones estimates that over 400 students use the reserves each
day, and the busiest daytime hours are generally between noon and 2
p.m. and 4 and 6 p.m.
