my University's library.....?

Question

didn't enough books. Everytime we went to the library to find the books on the list, there were only find 3 or 4 copies at most. Very annoying. The lecturer asked us to read a particular one but I was never able to do it. There are 100+ of us in the class!!! and my exam is coming up.

did it happen to you, did you buy all the books on your list in the bookshop?? I'm a bit frustrated not knowing where to go now.

sorry it should read "didn't have enough books"

Answer 1

It sucks, but I just bought them. When professors assign them, they expect you to buy them, no matter what they say. Oftentimes, they wrote the book so they get a cut of it.

To be nice to those who were really short on money, most professors will have a limited number of copies on hand. If there are 4 copies out there, that's awesome. Very good to have that many copies at a college library.

If you order online, try www.addall.com It's a search engine for books. I wish I had found out about it earlier.

Answer 2

You should buy all your textbooks for your classes. That will ensure that you have all the necessary information for the course.

You should not rely on your school's library to have a lot of copies of your books. It is too large of an expense to buy 100 copies of a book if that book will only be used a couple times. After their use, those 100 books will be sitting on a shelf in the library, taking up space (and money) that could be used for something more useful.

Answer 3

I had exactly the same problem! Very frustrating. I didn't have the Internet then either! I spent hours going around London book shops trying to get copies. Sometimes I'd just copy out the bits I needed then put the book back though once I had no choice and spent £80 on a book that was essential to write one of my essays!!

Answer 4

Make sure you report this to your lecturers and/or student representatives. This is a common problem in universitites. One way of combatting it is to request that one or two copies of popular books be put on short loan. At my university, this means 24 hour loan, with a pound charged for every hour it is overdue.

Lecturers often didn't help by taking out academic loans (of a year length) on books, blocking students from accessing them. In this case you can usually ask if the library will request the book for you from someone who is currently borrowing it.

You can also request for copies to be put on the reference shelf if short loan does not work. Enquire with lecturing staff if previous editions of your text books are just as useful, or out of date, as you may be able to pick them up second hand.

I'm lucky, as I am on a course with about 10 people in each lecture, as I am at a satellite campus. Our library can request from the main university library on main campus if it requires more copies. This year I haven't gone out and purchased books, as my course uses a lot of online material too, and the lecturers put copies on short loan routinely.

Worst case, get book list asap and take it out before every other bugger does!

Answer 5

This is a common problem in most universities, I bought the books I felt were necessary (core text). You can normally sell them on when you have finished with them to the people in the year below you. Blackwells bookshop do a buy back scheme.

Good luck.

Answer 6

I ended up just purchasing mine from Amazon.com. then when the semester was over, I sold them to students taking the class the next semester.