On Last Legs, UC Books Reevaluated

Undergraduate Council executives met last night to decide the fate of UC Books, a council-sponsored website designed three years ago to search the Internet for the cheapest prices on student textbooks.

Although the council executives said they would like to overhaul the floundering student service next fall, they reached no final conclusion on the best course to take.

According to former council president Paul A. Gusmorino ’02, who invented the program, UC Books experienced a brief surge of popularity when it was first introduced in February 2000.

But in the past few semesters, the website’s popularity has waned, as has the number of Harvard classes whose books are listed on the site.

While the website still lists textbook prices for most Core courses, it offers few reading lists for departmental courses.

In UC Books’ Afro-American studies section, for example, only one course links to a reading list—where a message reads that no textbooks are needed for the course. No reading lists are available for any course in the biological sciences department.

Though he says he does not have any exact figures, Gusmorino says UC Books has seen an especially dramatic decline in popularity this semester.

“I suspect right now that fewer students are using it this semester than last spring,” Gusmorino says.

According to council members, UC Books never reached the level of importance they had hoped because students failed to take sufficient responsibility for the project. They also say they blame a declining consumer interest in online book sales for UC Books’ woes.

And though some council executives say they will revamp the service and better council technology in general, others say UC Books may already have seen its last semester online.

Pick Up the Slack

Although Gusmorino runs UC Books with the help of five other council members, the program’s success depends primarily on the willingness of all council members to contribute book lists to the site.

All council members are asked to collect international standard book numbers (ISBN) for course reading lists. These codes allow UC Books to search the Web for cheap textbook prices.

But council members say certain representative were unreliable and collected few ISBNs this semester.

“Only about several people besides myself actually took up the call to look for reading,” says council member Oluseyi A. Fayanju ’05.

“I don’t know why everyone on the UC can’t just look up a couple of classes,” echoes council member Brian C. Grech ’03. “It requires a sort of a selfless sacrifice of time of half an hour. When kids are really busy it kind of falls to the wayside.”

Fayanju says the council’s inability to collect reading lists for classes, at least this semester, alienated students from UC Books.

“Some of their books for courses weren’t listed and that turned some people off from UC Books,” Fayanju says.

Burst Bubble

Many council members say they also blame a downturn in the online marketplace for the decline of UC Books.

Grech notes that when UC Books began, online booksellers were still relatively new and buying books online was considerably cheaper than buying them in stores.

“They were throwing money at us to check out their sites,” Grech says.

Gusmorino says he hoped to take advantage of the online buying frenzy when he founded UC Books.

“There was a lot of enthusiasm for online book buying,” Gusmorino says. “All these online bookstores were just starting.”

Recently, however, online prices have “kind of settled into the real world,” Grech says, and formerly booming online booksellers have taken a turn for the worse.

“Many of them have either gone out of business or have been absorbed,” Gusmorino says.

As a result of increased online prices, Gusmorino says students are less likely to buy their books online.

“You used to be able to save $20 on a textbook,” he says. “It was more worth it than it is now when you can only save maybe $5.”

According to council President Sujean S. Lee ’03, UC Books’ fading popularity adversely affected the council’s approach to the service this year.

“There was less demand and less enthusiasm,” Lee says. “We maybe didn’t have as much enthusiasm for the project. It was just more deflated because of the inherent characteristics of the market and student body needs.”

Technological Transition

Despite UC Books’ past failures, council members say they have several innovative ideas that could improve the service.

Gusmorino says he would like UC Books to allow students to sell used books to each other directly, following the model of UC Marketplace, a council-sponsored website where students can exchange used books, furniture and other items.

He calls the exchange of books within the Harvard community “an area where there’s a lot of room for progress.”

But Gusmorino says this book exchange would require new technology.

But council member Jared M. Gross ’03, who is also a Crimson editor, says the problem with introducing an internal book exchange would not be technology but the service’s overall effectiveness.

“It seems to me that the technology is already in place,” Gross says. “On the other hand, I really can’t imagine it being that big because again I’m not sure people hold on to their books that long.”

Gross says students might choose to sell their books back to the Coop rather than wait an entire semester for students to buy them.

“If I was interested enough in the book to hold on to it for six months, I would probably want to keep it,” he says.

Another proposed innovation for UC Books would allow students to directly enter in the ISBNs of books they need. The site would then list online prices. Currently, students can only search for books that council members have already linked to the UC Books site.

But Gusmorino says that expanding the scope of UC Books in this way will likely involve technology that has not yet been developed.

“We’ve had version 1.0 and 1.2. It’s time for 2.0,” Gusmorino says.

Leadership?

While technology poses one problem for the future of UC Books, council members say that Gusmorino’s upcoming graduation is even more of a threat.

Without the technical expertise of its former president, some council members say UC Books could fail—and Gusmorino says he agrees.

“We could just stop doing it,” Gusmorino says. “For it to continue there needs to be someone motivated and interested in continuing this service.”

“Paul is the person who created it, maintained it, is really solely responsible for its existence,” Lee says. “Because he’s graduating, it’s critical to find someone who’s as dedicated and as talented in maintaining UC Books.”

But Grech says lack of skills isn’t the problem.

“There are people on the UC who have the technical capabilities to maintain the site but I don’t know if there’s enough enthusiasm,” Grech says.

Council Technology Coordinator Jared S. Morgenstern ’03 says he would have to be paid before he took charge of UC Books.

But Gusmorino says he remains optimistic that UC Books will find a new leader. He has proposed creating a committee to operate the service, which council executives say they may form next fall.

—Staff writer Claire A. Pasternack can be reached at cpastern@fas.harvard.edu.