Textbooks are one of the greatest concerns for students who are trying to save money. Luckily, the Student Government is looking to help students with this problem by offering a textbook exchange service.

On April 2nd and 3rd, the Student Government held a Textbook Exchange event where students could donate or sell textbooks, as well as find textbooks they would need for their new classes this spring.

“We received 69 responses with over 100 book titles mentioned,” said Alice Doung, the Executive Officer for Academics, and the organizer of this event. Ten textbook matches were found through the event.

While the people facilitating the event worked to connect people who were selling to people who were looking for a specific textbook, they did not handle any exchange of money, leaving that up solely to the participants. The college had done events similar to this a few years ago, however those were cancelled. “I didn’t know why it got cancelled, maybe because of handling money or books getting lost,” said Duong. So to prevent any problems involving money, Student Government came up with the idea of simply connecting people, rather than dealing with money. “The matchmaking thing, we just made it up to prevent further problems involving money or lost books” said Duong.

“This is more like a match making service for textbooks,” said Marc Rayner Payne, the Executive Officer for Clubs and a volunteer at the event. “We just kind of facilitate and connect them.” This works better for both parties because then students have an opportunity to sell their old textbooks and get new ones for cheaper prices, and Student Government doesn’t have to handle money.

Duong had previously worked as the event programmer, which gave her knowledge of this event and the experience needed to bring it back. Having seen the success of this event in the past, she wanted to bring it back. “They previously got like about 120 responses,” said Duong.

People were able to participate in the event both online and in person. You could either go to the link which Student Government provided on the posters advertising the event, or write down which textbooks you were selling or looking for at the tables where the event took place.

At the event, there were individual tables set up for each academic category. Everything from STEM to Humanities, to High School/ Pre College and International Education were represented.

Here at Edmonds Community College, the estimated yearly price of textbooks on EdCC’s website is $870 for a full-time 12 credit student. So if a student takes three classes a quarter, and each of those classes needs one textbook, that’s an average of $97 per textbook for the whole year. “We see the concerns about expensive textbooks and think about what actions we should take,” said Duong.

If you missed this event, not to worry! There will hopefully be other opportunities in the future. “We’ll try to put this event at the end of Spring quarter this year too,” said Duong.

There are also buying and selling pages on Facebook for the Edmonds Community College community, which you can find by searching Facebook for “Edmonds Community College Sell&Buy”.