Students shopping for textbooks this semester now have a new way to get their books on campus.
The campus bookstore is piloting a yearlong textbook rental program that will allow students to rent books for many large, entry-level classes at up to half the price of a new book, according to Director of Dining and Business Services Patti Klos.
Klos and sophomore Meredith Goldberg, chair of the Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senate's Services Committee, hope the program will help the bookstore compete with online textbook sales.
"I think it's an amazing draw," Goldberg said. "The bookstore is now being competitive with the online market again."
Sophomore Orli Gottlieb rented textbooks from the bookstore for this semester's Introduction to International Relations class. She found that the program saved her money and time.
"It was less expensive," Gottlieb said. "It seemed easier to deal with than buying them and trying to sell them back to someone or sell them back to the bookstore — it was just simple."
Students who rent books are required to return them to the bookstore during the final exam period.
Barnes & Noble, the distributor for the campus bookstore, piloted textbook rentals at 25 other schools last January, according to Karen DiScala, manager of corporate communications for Barnes & Noble.
She said that the rental program aims to provide students with more options while shopping for textbooks.
"From our perspective, we just want to give students another option in terms of how they get books," DiScala said. "One of the things we're committed to is giving students as many … options and choices as possible."
Klos proposed the idea of the rental program to the Executive Administrative Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences Leah McIntosh this fall, she said. She also researched the logistics of the program and its possible effects on the university.
While renting textbooks can potentially represent significant savings for students, according to Klos, the rental option could potentially cut into the university's commission from the sale of textbooks.
"We've reached a concession that we can cope with what the financial impact could be," Klos said. "The university is not trying to profit [from textbooks] so much as there are budgets that have been estimated that are expecting a certain amount of commission," she said.
Barnes & Noble's campus bookstore rental program has undergone considerable expansion in recent months. In September, the program was in place at approximately 300 schools; that number has since grown to over 430 schools, according to DiScala.
The company piloted the rental program at all different sizes and types of universities with great success, DiScala said.
"We got tremendous feedback," she said. "Every place we launched it, it was very successful and well-received."
Barnes & Noble made the program available to all of the campus bookstores represented by the company this fall.
The university will evaluate the rental program's success next spring and decide whether to continue it, Klos said.
"We're doing this for this year and we'll evaluate in the spring and if we feel that it is working well then we can continue to do that," she said. "We wanted to be sure we weren't locked into something in the event that we didn't think it was in the campus' best interests."
The bookstore will submit financial data to the university next month detailing the program's initial impact, Goldberg said. She added that piloting the rental program in the spring allows the university to address problems more easily than at the beginning of an academic year.
"In the spring, we're able to see the problems and identify them so they don't happen again in the fall," Goldberg said.
The program has received positive feedback so far, according to Goldberg.
"There's been a huge response," she said. "I've heard students talking about how they're thinking about renting now. Right now, it looks like we're on track to be very successful."
