Textbooks.. keep or toss?

[Catlovers141]

I kept most textbooks from classes related to my major, and a few of the other novel-type books that we had to read.  But I rarely re-read entire books, so I got rid of most of the ones I did not think I would need to briefly reference again.  They are just too heavy and I have limited space, and I know I will accumulate a lot more in grad school!

[redheadacademic]

Late reply.... I kept checking out lots of books from the school library, and whenever I found one I loved and was on a topic I could see myself needing, I would check on book selling sites - and often would find the book for $.99 plus shipping (we're talking 1500 page textbooks!). Add $3 shipping and I would have the same textbook I borrowed from the library for $4:). I have now started to build up a library this way - usually the books are one edition behind, and most are almost new - no highlighting or writing. It allows me to add books on related topics that I would like to be able to study but that aren't exactly in my field (anatomy, physiology, etc).

[WriteAndKnit]

I had to sell/give away most of my undergrad books (including lots of my non-textbooks), because I was moving a few hundred miles away in a corolla. I've been rebuilding and adding as I can (mostly novels, history/social nonfiction, books about writing, things like that). And reference books about "unrelated" information (I have an Army survival guide, for example).

 

I will eventually need a room that is primarily a library. I have no problem with this scenario.

[Guest Gnome Chomsky]

I would get rid of them as soon as I was done with them unless I needed them for something like to study for comps after finishing the class. If I was really the type who wanted to keep books, I'd invest in an e-reader. I'm not a big fan of having a lot of stuff that I don't use on a regular basis. 

[spectastic]

I'm only going to keep a couple of books relevant to my field. the rest of that shit can be found on google.

[RunnerGrad]

I can't imagine ever throwing out books!  I keep all of the textbooks that are relevant to my field.  Books that I will never use again I sell back to the bookstore.  Really old books that will never be read again (fiction and nonfiction) get donated to Goodwill.  I would never just throw out a book!

 

My husband and I have a huge collection of books.  We love books and we love reading.  They are all organized and categorized in boxes in our basement.  We both reread books quite a lot, so getting rid of books is something neither of us really does!

[Chai_latte]

I ALWAYS keep good textbooks if they're STEM (math, physics etc.).  I still have my old, AP Euro text (which was awesome), a couple of grammar/writing books and my old Latin texts.  Aside from those, I re-sell or give away.  

I purchased all of these crates from K-mart (or was it Burlington Coat Factory?) for book storage.  My apartment is too small and I'm too poor for a bookshelf.

[Chai_latte]

Late reply.... I kept checking out lots of books from the school library, and whenever I found one I loved and was on a topic I could see myself needing, I would check on book selling sites - and often would find the book for $.99 plus shipping (we're talking 1500 page textbooks!). Add $3 shipping and I would have the same textbook I borrowed from the library for $4:). I have now started to build up a library this way - usually the books are one edition behind, and most are almost new - no highlighting or writing. It allows me to add books on related topics that I would like to be able to study but that aren't exactly in my field (anatomy, physiology, etc).

YES!!  I did this last year and built a FANTASTIC science library.  I've gotten so many great books this way...some of these gems were even out of print!

[Authorization]

I know I may sound like something of a pack rat, but I ALWAYS keep my textbooks. I'm in the same department for grad school as undergrad and have kept all of my undergraduate texts in case I need to refer to them in an academic paper and just so I can look back at them for foundational materials to build on or to gain a comprehensive understanding of arguments and bits of knowledge that recur throughout my courses. 

[Scarf in the wind]

I had sold them back to my campus bookstore for money.

 

Will likely keep books from grad school onwards, along with books written by research professors from my field of interest.

[Academicat]

I'm going to deviate from the English teacher stereotype: At least in the US, our houses are packed to the gills with unnecessary things, and books are  just a few more. We have libraries full of books, public libraries that will not get funding if they don't have our support. If I can, I avoid buying books. If I borrow a book and find it especially useful for reference or re-readable for pleasure, then I'll track down a copy - used, if possible. I do keep a shelf or so of books, but when it starts getting overfull, I purge my bookshelves and sell them or donate to charity. I have a decent little collection of comp/rhet reference books that I've gotten free from publishers over the years, but honestly, when I need those articles, I access them via databases anyhow because .pdfs are searchable, so I question keeping them.

 

So, my take - if you really feel attached to that particular book for some reason other than, "it's a book and the number of books I own are a direct reflection on my status as an intellectual" then by all means, keep it, but ask yourself whether it's really worth more stuff in an already suffocatingly consumerist society.

 

Of course, society could collapse any minute. All the libraries could close and some evil government organization could orchestrate a book burning a la Fahrenheit 451, and all human knowledge could be on the brink of being lost forever if not for the hoarded books of a few wise individuals, and if this is the case, my bad.

[Roll Right]

I see a lot of folks here are not interested in owning texts. I can't agree with this position, and my own position may seem elitist, but I think its a valid position.

I'm probably only speaking to PhD students who want to pursue a career in the university, but i think it is extremely important to keep the books you're using in your graduate research. I think this is especially important for folks who are in the humanities and social sciences. I realize books are expensive, but it pays to have these texts on hand. You'll need to keep coming back to these texts for insight and inspiration. You'll always get more from these texts as well, because your interpretation of them will change as you advance through your career. You cannot settle for a 3 paragraph abstract, a book review, or a short term reading based on a library loan to really assimilate the knowledge from these texts. I think you really need to live in these texts to master their arguments and insights.

Also, I think Google books is a poor resource for graduate students engaged in research. It really promotes a fragmented reading of books. You can simply look up the term you're interested in reading about walk away from a book with a snippet about that term. But what have you missed? What do the preceding pages say about that term which wasn't in capsulated in the snippet you found? How have you imstrumentalized and distorted someone else's work for your own purposes?

I have many of the classical sociological texts on my shelves, I've read them in depth and continue to read them as I move through my studies. And I continue to buy contemporary texts which take the classics as foundational to their arguments because I believe it is important to see how the knowledge of my field has progressed. I think building a library like this is important. Its the toolshed of the academic.

Edited July 13, 2014 by Roll Right

[ProfMoriarty]

Where I'm from, we don't have as much of a "textbook culture" as they seem to have in the US. As such, we typically bought photocopies of the texts we had to read (typically a chapter or two), and those I have away when I graduated. I only ever purchased books if the topic was of particular interest to me, so I'm not letting those go under any circumstance!

 

Towards the end of my major I was downloading PDFs instead of buying books

[CageFree]

History is very text-based and we generally mark up our books too heavily for them to be resold. Checking a book out from the library works sometimes but often we go back to books we've read for reference and to our notes. Historians generally build upon other works and we need to know what's already been written... abstracts and book reviews are not enough to get a good sense of that.

I keep all books in my subfield, most in my larger field (those in my thematic interests or that I just think are really good), and a few in areas outside my field (for example, US History). I also keep books in related disciplines like sociology and anthropology.

I have been selling off books from undergrad since I no longer work on that part of the world or era... what's telling is that those books are almost 20 years old and I often get 8-10 dollars for them (I paid around 20 for them 15 years ago) because we don't keep updating and reissuing textbooks the way it's often done in the sciences. The knowledge doesn't become "obsolete," though one's interpretation might.

Edited July 20, 2014 by CageFree