Text Books - Buy, Rent, Digital

[RBWilliams]

Starting MSW grad school this fall.  Having been to school since 1997...lol.  I'm a visual person and feel I NEED to have a hard copy books to mark up as I please.  Is any one renting or buying digital?  While I do buy digital books for my e-reader, I still enjoy hard books and freak out over digital text books.  Though it would make it easier for transporting.  Any other ideas on this?  Thanks!

[rj16]

I can't do digital and I feel like renting is a waste of money. If the book was one that I really wouldn't want to keep in the long run I'd opt for digital. 

 

I find it difficult to read for extended periods of time on my computer and I get more easily distracted. I think of books as an investment and just minimize how much I carry them around. 

[RBWilliams]

That is what I'm thinking.  Buying it will be then.

[maelia8]

I have an Amazon Kindle Paperwhite and I prefer digital editions. On the kindle I can highlight, bookmark, and leave notes just like I can in a physical book, and after years of buying pricy hardcover editions, the digital versions are refreshingly cheaper. A kindle has a specially calibrated screen so that it doesn't strain your eyes (I read on mine each day for hours without problems) and it's lightweight and easily transportable, unlike half a dozen books. Since a kindle only connects to the internet to download books (if you set it up that way), the internet and other windows are not there to distract you. After I'd bought literally hundreds of books (I have a library filling seven bookcases and overflowing into my closet), the kindle was the best investment I ever made to lighten my load.

[RBWilliams]

Oh wow, that is great.  I use kindle app all the time and love amazon.....will check prices out....just to see....I got 5 mos before school starts.  I do see those options in my Kindle app reading.  

[rj16]

I have an Amazon Kindle Paperwhite and I prefer digital editions. On the kindle I can highlight, bookmark, and leave notes just like I can in a physical book, and after years of buying pricy hardcover editions, the digital versions are refreshingly cheaper. A kindle has a specially calibrated screen so that it doesn't strain your eyes (I read on mine each day for hours without problems) and it's lightweight and easily transportable, unlike half a dozen books. Since a kindle only connects to the internet to download books (if you set it up that way), the internet and other windows are not there to distract you. After I'd bought literally hundreds of books (I have a library filling seven bookcases and overflowing into my closet), the kindle was the best investment I ever made to lighten my load.

 

Interesting! I have a much older kindle which I had hoped to read textbooks on but (a) many were inaccessible and ( taking notes was ridiculous. Is note taking on the Paperwhite flawless? And how is it for reading pdf articles? 

 

I've been thinking of buying an iPad for reading articles (I like being able to have them on a separate screen from my computer). This might be a much much cheaper alternative!

[themmases]

I have an iPad that I rented textbooks on this semester, and I ended up liking it a lot-- so much so that I scanned a course binder I had because it suddenly felt intolerable compared to just carrying a tablet. It's also really nice for reading PDFs, although I think I'd replace it with an Android tablet if it ever died because I dislike iOS.

 

Pros:

- Light

- Always having your book (as long as you were going to use the tablet for other stuff)

- On tablets, the book fills the screen so you're not distracted by other apps

- Eye strain isn't really a problem because the brightness is easy to control and it's easy to zoom

- No worries about a new edition coming out and the book becoming worthless-- I already paid for the rental only

- Every ebook app is on iOS and Android, so I was able to pick the store with the lowest price

 

Cons:

- Not natural to type on if you're taking notes in the book

- Not natural to just flip to reference material at the front of the book-- you'll need to bookmark the material and your new page and then go into menus

- Long, image-heavy books can be resource hogs, especially if you're buying a model behind to save money

- IME, DRM has been more restrictive than for other books. I can't just log in and read the book in a browser the way I could with an epub of a novel or something. This probably depends on the publisher and the rental agreement, though.

[whitegummy]

If it's a text that is essential for my major and I will end up referring back to it a lot in the future, I prefer to have the physical version

If it's just an elective or a side course that I need for a semester/quater, then definitely digital

[danieleWrites]

Like White Gummy, I pick a medium based on my use for the book.

 

I'm in English, so I not only have the option of getting books at the used book store, I can pick up about half of my texts on servers like Project Gutenberg. Why pay for a paper copy when I can get it online free? Right?

 

For books I'll use again, or will maintain as a reference in either my grad career or my job, paper! For books that have annual editions, I rented them, but that was back in the day when I had "readers" for survey type courses. All theory and methodology books are on paper, though I have scanned a chapter or two that I would refer to regularly during the semester so I wouldn't have to carry the book with me (I can do pdfs on my phone, score!).

[juilletmercredi]

You can also mark up digital books, and in some cases it's easier to do that than on hard copy books.

Personally, I'm a huge fan of digital books, and if they were big when I needed textbooks I would have 100% gone with them.

-They tend to be cheaper than hard copy books.
-You can make markings, highlights, and annotations in a digital book just as easily - and sometimes more easily - than you can in a hard-copy book.  Your annotation can be typed and will be saved across multiple devices, and the annotation can be literally bigger than the physical space in the margin of the book.
-You can also flip to pages much more quickly and find your annotations, highlights, and bookmarks faster than you would in a hard copy book.  So if you need to flip to a passage for a paper - that happens more quickly.
-They take up less space.  As a grad student with a small apartment, preserving space is important to me.
-They're less expensive to move when it's time to move.
-The majority of my textbooks become redundant after the semester is over.  But even if they don't, digital textbooks last past the semester too.

Once I got used to reading most of my things on the computer, I didn't find it any harder than reading in hard copy.  I have a tablet and I do most of my book reading on the tablet.  I love reading articles on my iPad - highlighting and annotating is super easy.

I also don't feel like renting is a waste of money.  If a textbook is $200 but I can rent it for $70 for the semester and I'll never need it again, why would I spend an additional $130 to have a book that is just going to sit on my bookshelf after I'm finished taking the class?  That seems more like a waste of money to me, personally.

I have bought hard copies of reference manuals that I will be referring to a lot - like I have a hard copy of two books on structural equation modeling on my shelf.  I find those easier to use because finding the pictorial models and the syntax for the statistical programs is easier in hard copy.  But if the book is primarily text, I'm all about the digital.

 

Also, FWIW my program actually didn't require a lot of textbooks.  We had a lot of article readings you could find in the library and we had a few paperbacks.  The one textbook I knew I was never going to use again I borrowed from the library for a semester and then returned it after the class was over.  I bought a couple of other ones I knew I was never going to use again used, but if they had been available in digital copies for cheaper I would've done that.  Honestly, I would just go with whatever's the cheapest option for those books.  Sometimes you can find a used book or an older edition on Amazon for like $5-15.

[milkman2500]

Starting MSW grad school this fall.  Having been to school since 1997...lol.  I'm a visual person and feel I NEED to have a hard copy books to mark up as I please.  Is any one renting or buying digital?  While I do buy digital books for my e-reader, I still enjoy hard books and freak out over digital text books.  Though it would make it easier for transporting.  Any other ideas on this?  Thanks!

 

For renting, I think it only makes sense if you only plan to use it to complete the specific course (for example an undergrad not expecting to continue on to graduate studies).

 

The real question is digitial vs. hard copy. I like the appeal of digital so that I can have access to all of my books anywhere...but I've found the software just isn't there yet. I have some books in 3 different company's clouds that all require unique software to reference. They all approach highlighting and note taking differently and it starts to overcomplicate what should be a simple process. At the end of the day, you want to learn the material. The note taking and highlighting should be straight forward. That's why I am personally going hard-copy for my books from now on.

[victorydance]

I don't buy books for classes. I either take them out from the library or try to get a free e-book edition. All journals I just snipe from the library database.

 

I consider buying books that I might want for the future, but that's it. I cannot justify paying the ridiculous prices university books cost these days.

[toasterazzi]

Once renting became an option, I jumped on it. At my school, renting textbooks can save you up to 60% on books and I appreciate that quite a bit. Honestly, I've never been one to keep the majority of the books I use for class, so renting just makes sense to me. I also got a Kindle last year, so if it's cheaper and available that way (which a lot of English books are), then I just get it on my Kindle. 

[bumblyboo]

My plan is to find digital copies online/in the library or rent. If possible, I'd like to connect with some 2nd years and see if they'd let me borrow their old books.