August 13–19, 2008, Number 505
Shopping for Books
As the beginning of the school year draws even closer, the time for book shopping is at hand. Michigan Tech makes it easy to locate the books that each student will need as required by the courses the student has signed up for. This article will discuss the options that are available to find the textbooks your student will need to begin the semester off right.
The first place to check out is the Campus Bookstore online, because that is where students can find an easy listing of the books they will need. If your student is interested in discovering what books they will need, have them go to the Campus Bookstore website and click on Express Text. Your student will be required to enter in their ISO information (user name and password) for Michigan Tech. Just to clarify, your student’s user name is the first part of their email (anything before @mtu.edu) and then the password that was given to them by Michigan Tech for logging into their email. Once they have done this, the website will be routed back to the Campus Bookstore’s Express Text site showing which books they will need for each class. What the students should see is the title of the book with the first author’s last name, the date of copyright and the ISBN # on the left side. Then to the right it will give the New Price and the Used Price that the Campus Bookstore sells these items for. Students can purchase their books directly from this website and then pick the books up when they arrive at Michigan Tech or have the books shipped to them.
It is alright to wait to purchase textbooks until you arrive on campus, because extra staff will be available to assist the increase in students searching for textbooks during Orientation week as well as the first week of classes. Your student would simply need to bring in the list of classes or a list of textbooks needed to the Campus Bookstore where staff will assist them in finding the books they need.
One great aspect about the Campus Bookstore is that they will price match. This means that if a student finds a new book on Amazon (or any other credible bookstore) that is at a lower cost (including shipping) than what the price of the new book at the bookstore on campus is selling at, the bookstore will sell the book to the student for the price of what they could get it at Amazon. This makes it convenient as the book will be at hand and students won’t have to wait for the book to be shipped.
Another local area store to find textbooks at is the College Bookshelf located just off campus, near Wells Fargo and Jim’s IGA in the Pearl Street Mall. Sometimes this can be a store that might have the book your student is looking for, if the Campus Bookstore is waiting for a shipment of the book to arrive.
Many times, students can purchase books from other students looking to sell their old textbooks, something that I’ve taken advantage of before. A great online location to find used books from other students is at the Barkboard Forum where your student will log in using their ISO username and password and then click on the Books forum. There are plenty of listings for students to check out varying from Math to Engineering, Business to Spanish and much more.
Some things to keep in mind and to let your students know about: It can be very helpful to keep the receipts on books that you purchase from either the Campus Bookstore or the College Bookshelf as this will help with returning the books should the need arise. Also, some books come packaged in plastic wrap and once the wrap is off, the bookstores will not accept them back. So, it is important to make sure that your student absolutely needs the books before they open them or have to return them. The professor will let the students know exactly what books are necessary for the class.
I hope the information above helps your student with taking care of the books they will need for the upcoming Fall semester. If there are any questions or comments about the article please email me at my personal email address. Any suggestions for future articles are welcomed.
Until next week,
- Michigan Technological University
- 1400 Townsend Drive, Houghton, MI 49931-1295
- 906-487-1885