Booked Solid

Buying required books may not be an unpleasant rite of the new term, but it is certainly a financial strain. Students who build their libraries discriminately often try to cope with the high costs by reselling texts they no longer need and buying second-hand copies of presently required texts. At present this means facing the unpleasant experience of being offered 20 to 30 per cent of the retail price they originally paid for a book, and charged 67 to 75 percent for a correspondingly well-preserved text.

Since this financial distress is multiplied by the seven or eight times one must go through it, the Council for Undergraduate Affairs or the Harvard Student Agencies might do well to explore the feasibility of a non-profit textbook pool.

No tears should be shed prematurely for the local merchants, none of whom offer students the 50 per cent retail cost that is theoretically "standard" among college bookstores, or even the forty per cent that they claim to offer. This hardly means that the book peddlers in the Square are profiteering on second-hand texts: Phillips considers the textbook trade a service to the community and apparently makes no money on it. The COOP keeps people coming into the store for books but makes its big money in other merchandise. The Harvard Bookstore specializes in prints and paper-backs, Barnes and Noble's in review outlines; both stores cater to a large non-University clientele. In brief, savings afforded to students would be significant if the textbook middleman were eliminated, but none of the middlemen feel they would suffer.

The problems confronting any organization trying to develop a textbook service for undergraduates are obvious enough. The first question is one of space; perhaps realistic consideration of such a service must await the establishment of a student union, with recreation, study and snack facilities as well. Then too, certain texts are made obsolete by new editions or changing course needs; whoever undertakes the project must do some thoughtful consulting with professors in the heavily-populated lower level courses, and must know something about the second-hand book trade.

But the obvious and tangible advantages that such a project could offer thousands of students make it worthy of exploration. The HSA, with its entrepreneurial experience and skills, seems best-suited to take the initiative here.