Some courses assign textbooks that go largely unused.
It goes without saying that students welcome anything that can help relieve some of the stress on their limited budgets. If you are an university student who will have to spend hundreds of dollars on buying new textbooks, there are enormous savings if you are willing to settle for used copies. Furthermore, you may even be able to get free copies of your textbooks and other course materials if you are willing to exercise a little creativity. Although you will never be able to get all of your textbooks for free, each dollar saved is a dollar that could go towards better things.
Instructions
1. Check with your university's library to see if they circulate any copies of the textbooks on your curriculum. If there are no copies available, see if the library offers any inter-library services and check with those services if copies are available with the library's partners. Place holds to check out copies if they are not immediately available.
2. Check with the library to see if they have any copies of the desired textbooks for in-library use. You might need to compete for limited copies with many people, but you might also use the chance to talk them into a group study session.
3. See if you can find and download a legitimate copy of the textbook or course materials online. There are many websites out there that specialize in offering free books on a wide range of topics. For example, if you need a copy of "Beowulf" for an English literature class, you don't need to buy a copy when you can download a copy from Project Gutenburg.
4. See if you can find copies of articles already published in academic journals if your course materials include anthologies. Your tuition probably already pays for free access to a number of academic databases containing hundreds of thousands of publications. Get a librarian to help you if you don't know access these services.
5. See if you can convince one of your friends to gift or lend you the textbooks if they have already finished the course. Even if you can't get the textbooks for free, this is a good way to get a discount on used textbooks. Some universities might even have established networks to facilitate such exchanges between students. Take advantage whenever and wherever possible.
