The above was a slogan for the defunct Crown Books chain, run by Robert Haft half a generation ago. "Books cost too much," so he opened Crown Books, a chain that discounted all of its wares, and I should know since I spent many happy hours there, ringing up sales and sticking bright orange discount price tags on books.
And these days, anyone who knows me knows that I think that textbooks cost too much, and now, apparently so does the Virginia State Legislature:
The guidelines would also require professors to acknowledge that they are aware of the cost of the books they assign. If faculty members do not plan to use supplements such as workbooks that are sold with texts, college bookstores would order the books and other materials separately, if cost-effective.
As much as I appreciate the state's concern, I am furious that it feels compelled to issue guidelines governing how professors should order books. It's a major intrusion and professional insult. Furthermore, we aren't the ones publishing and updating the books at a rapid clip. And many of us are aware of the cost and do our best to help keep the costs down by ordering supplements only if we know that we'll be using them. Or by examining copies with a jeweler's eyepiece, so to speak, to find the best bargain. Or by putting texts on reserve in the library so that if a student can't afford the book, at least she has access to it.
Yes, textbooks do cost too much. Going after the professors, however, isn't going to solve the problem.
Yes, with prices so outrageous, it seems to me there's very little reason to use textbooks for the reading I want students to do for my comp classes. I've been using the electronic-reserve services at the college library quite a bit, which seems to me a great way to pull together my own reader (esp. with the theme-based classes I've been teaching lately), as well as linking to available online articles. Clancy at culturecat had a very interesting post a while ago (I can't find it right now) about pulling a theme-based collection of readings from Creative Commons-licensed blogs. Also I've been very interested, following her promotion, in the idea of using H2O playlists to collect up some theme-based sets of readings. So many possibilities!!
Posted by: Holly | March 09, 2006 at 11:34 AM
I remember a graduate student who pulled together articles for her class, and one of the publishers packaged the articles and sold them to students. It was much cheaper than a regular textbook, was within copyright regulations, and guaranteed the reading would all be used in the class. I just wish I knew which publisher it was.
Of course, now, I work with a department where we all are required to use the same textbooks for each class. That makes it difficult to use a method like the one described above because we can't all agree about what articles would be useful. In this case, we are left to the whims of publishing companies, who, I agree, are more responsible for outrageous book costs than instructors.
Posted by: macncheese | March 13, 2006 at 01:16 PM
Speaking of textbooks, Dead Dad recently posted about textbooks:
http://suburbdad.blogspot.com/2006/03/common-textbooks.html
Sorry, I don't know how to make it a link.
Posted by: macncheese | March 13, 2006 at 01:21 PM
The Mercury Reader is the one I've seen (from Pearson): http://www.pearsoncustom.com/database/merc.html. It has 600 readings to choose from, including many of the standards, then lets you add up to 20% of other materials. I haven't tried it out myself, but it looked like a good possibility.
Posted by: Holly | March 13, 2006 at 01:30 PM