Prices and buybacks, ordering and availability - all common concerns about the UB Bookstore from students and professors alike.
On Wednesday, the Faculty Senate Executive Committee heard from UB Bookstore manager Greg Neumann and text manager Bill Adamczyk.
"Follett Higher Education has been around since the 1980s and has over 700 stores in the USA and Canada," said Neumann, who has run the bookstore for 17 years. "We value our customers."
Follett employs Neumann, but the manager feels that he is actually working for UB's faculty and students.
Many of the issues addressed pertained to the ordering and pricing of books. The first issue on the docket was over the fall and spring adoption cycles, a period where professors hand in book orders for necessary course materials.
This past semester, over 2,500 titles were ordered, a number much higher than it has been in the past. One of the many problems, according to Neumann, was that this semester, professors were not turning in orders.
"We need professors to hand in their adoptions as soon as possible, preferably in the spring semester by March 31, or at the latest during finals week," Neumann said. "This is because we need about eight weeks to get the books and to see if there are any edition changes."
The bookstore hopes that by the end of this semester, students can sell back their books at half price. If professors do not submit their order, then the bookstore is forced to charge wholesale prices for the text and students miss out.
"It is vital to for the bookstore to give students the opportunity to sell back their books at half price," Adamczyk said. "If we don't do this, we will lose customers to the Internet."
Changed or late orders can cause errors and eventually wreak havoc for the bookstore and students. Late orders in the spring mean less copies of those ordered books to be bought from students as "used" at the end of fall, and forces the bookstore to substitute titles and bundles as necessary. It can also lead to under-stocking of necessary texts.
"Basically, the earlier the orders are in, the better it is for everyone else," Adamczyk said.
Students at the meeting were critical of packaged or bundled textbooks, referring to them as unnecessary and costing more money than just a singular, plain text.
"My main issue is about book bundling and how it will be addressed," said Melody Mercedes, secretary of the SUNY Student Assembly. "Many students are forced to buy bundles yet they never use any of the extras that come with it."
In response to Mercedes and other members of the Student Association's concerns over bundles, Adamczyk explained that the bookstore has no control over how companies package their books.
"My advice to professors is to not order bundles if they never plan on using any of the extras in them, this can cut the price of the book immensely," he said.
Adamczyk also brought up a suggestion for lowing the increasing cost of books. He believes that professors should order custom-made books and cut out chapters they do not plan on covering. According to Neumann, this will bring books from a $130 a title down to $75. Several students, however, argued that books custom-edited for use at UB are impossible to be purchased cheaply online, and yield either less or no money back for resale.
Professors also voiced their concerns over foreign book orders. One professor explained how they had placed an order for a foreign book in late October, yet the order was not fulfilled until Dec. 21. This resulted in his book arriving five weeks into the spring semester.
Another professor griped that he had ordered a foreign book and was never told by the bookstore that his book was out of print.
"With this new system, I will admit some things fell through the cracks and were messed up due to transitioning into the new system," Neumann said.
The transition came in the middle of the fall semester, instead of at the end of the spring semester, which caused slight delays. However, the bookstore manager believes that the system is running pretty seamlessly with fewer errors than the older system.
He said that he believes that if a gap between professors and the bookstore is fixed, then students will be able to save money at the beginning and end of this semester.
"Our main goal is to help students get the most for their money," Adamczyk said.
Photo: Courtesy of Laron Fomby
