New routine for textbook buyers
The USU Bookstore recently completed a re-organization of all textbooks to alphabetical order, said marketing manager Celestyn Hollingshead. She said the bookstore made the change so students can find their books easily, and the new layout allows space for more books on the shelves.
The USU Bookstore is also in the process of setting up four kiosks where students can plug in their A-number and see the list of books their professors’ have asked for. This list can be printed so the student can take it with them while they are looking for their books, said David Parkinson, director of The Bookstore.
“No one keeps in their head ‘oh I’m in accounting 1010, section 4,'” he said. “Before, we had the right books and they were in the right place, but there was some confusion, a lot of returns and headaches for the students.”
The list of a students’ books can be printed out in any location and can be found on the bookstore’s website by clicking “Textbooks” and then “Automatically List Courses.”
“This way they’ve already got their list of books in their hand when they get here (the USU Bookstore) and they’re ready to Rock ‘n’ Roll,” Parkinson said.
When books were organized by the classes’ departments, sometimes the same book would be in multiple places throughout the store. At times, a book would appear to be sold out, but in reality there were more in another section of the store, Parkinson said.
“When there were issues with not enough books, it’s just an issue of the information not being fed to us, so they open a new section,” Hollingshead said. “There are 50 more students and the bookstore doesn’t know about it so we don’t have those books.”
She said another issue was that some classes had few students, so there weren’t many books ordered. This left a lot of space open that could not be filled with anything else. Because the books were organized by class, it would have created confusion to combine multiple classes’ books.
“Finding books will be a learning process at first,” she said. “The ones who have been here for a while might be a little confused, but we are trying to have clear instruction and people will be there to help any confusion.”
Parkinson said these changes are effective for three reasons: internal efficiency in the USU Bookstore’s operation, it’s easier to shelve books, consolidate space and students will eventually find their textbook search to be easier once they understand the system.
“Humans hate change,” Parkinson said. “Even when their reaction is ‘wow, that’s cool.’ We weren’t just going for different, we were going for better.” In the future, at the end of a semester, an e-mail will be sent to all students who purchased books giving them an estimate of how much money USU textbook buy-backs will give them for each book. The USU Bookstore originally hoped this would be implemented during this semester’s buy-backs, Parkinson said.
“The purpose of (the) registrar’s relationship with the bookstore is so there is full disclosure of all book costs, and that was affective this year,” said John Mortensen, USU’s registrar.
Students will also be e-mailed in the future with an estimate of how much their books will collectively cost before they are ordered.
Mortensen said when he presented this idea to ASUSU with Parkinson, there was nothing but positive response. In order for the USU Bookstore to have any information on what books are needed, they must work directly with registrar because they make sure professors’ requests for certain books are turned in on time. Professors had to have their book requests turned in for the spring 2011 semester by September 2010.
“For faculty, the biggest pain is lead time,” Mortensen said. “If they are teaching a class, they may realize a book they are using isn’t working, but they still have to make a decision about the book early in the semester.”
Computer programs are being developed to make the process faster, he said, because higher education re-authorization requires the textbooks professors need for their classes to be submitted well in advance.
Though the bookstore has and will undergo many changes to perfect the textbook buying process, Parkinson said he is satisfied with the recent functionality improvements that were made.
“Out of all the changes, I think the organization of the store will impact students the most,” Parkinson said. “Now the employees don’t have to shelve in three different places.”
– catherine.meidell@aggiemail.usu.edu