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University textbooks

Nero

Nero

Re: Tired
I'm having a clearout of my den, and I've got a stack of chunky textbooks from my university days (engineering flavour), which have never seen the light of day for a good 40 years. Is there a market for these, are charities interested? I imagine the courses have changed over the years, so they may no longer be of use to a current student.

Thoughts?
 
Nero said:
I'm having a clearout of my den, and I've got a stack of chunky textbooks from my university days (engineering flavour), which have never seen the light of day for a good 40 years. Is there a market for these, are charities interested? I imagine the courses have changed over the years, so they may no longer be of use to a current student.

Thoughts?
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we send ours (at the University i work for) to a charity that distributes them - let me see if i can remember.

As an aside - most of the written resource (text books, conference proceedings, journals etc) we use now are online....we do still use a number of classic computer science texts, but we rely on the fact they are the very latest edition and will be online....
 
My daughter has just finished the first year of a science degree, I don't think she's bought any text books at all. World has changed.

Something you could try is looking for them on Amazon. Any that have a value should leap out.
 
Most text books get revisions fairly regularly, so you'd have to check how valid they may still be to the course.

For my Msc I preferred actual physical text books so bought them but they where all offered free of charge on the Universities website.

I gave them to people starting the course after I finished.
 
Paul R said:
I don't think she's bought any text books at all. World has changed.
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not surprised, i think few students do. When you look at how much i am having to budget for e-book access per year, and how much for physical book stock in my subject, the disparity is massively in favour of e-books.
 
Nero said:
I'm having a clearout of my den, and I've got a stack of chunky textbooks from my university days (engineering flavour), which have never seen the light of day for a good 40 years. Is there a market for these, are charities interested? I imagine the courses have changed over the years, so they may no longer be of use to a current student.

Thoughts?
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"Books to Africa" and "Book Harvest" are two charities that come to mind
 
gintonic said:
"Books to Africa" and "Book Harvest" are two charities that come to mind
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OK will look into that. I'd feel a bit Nazi if I put them in the recycling. I remember being a bit peeved when the first thing you had to spend your grant on was books, and some of them were written by our professors, so they reaped a slice of the action. I don't suppose the basic science of engineering and maths has evolved that much, but they'd probably be of limited use now, especially if it's all e-books these days

edit : Books2africa.org looks to be a good bet, as the other one is university-centric
 
I took al my old books from Engineering courses (fluids, thermodynamics, mechanics, maths) to the Nottingham Trent Uni library and donated them, back in the early 90s. These subjects do not age too much.
 
No doubt I'm old fashioned, but I much refer 'real' books. No batteries needed. :) I still have all mine from undergrad onwards and do look up things in them. Easier to read than a screen.
 
I did a few years of HE recently. I found having some paper text books handy to reduce screen time. Though I often also had a PDF copy - being able to CRTL+F a text book is super handy.

I bought older editions on Ebay for less than it would cost me to post them. Seemed like anything other than the current edition was virtually worthless.
 
Some of the older editions can actually be better, they get edited so frequently nowadays just to sell the new edition that some of the original carefully chosen words and explanations get warped as in game of chinese whispers. There's no cash value in 80s textbooks though nor value to libraries that have become souped up common rooms for plugging in the laptop and pretending to work ;)
 
@gavreid I still find (good) libraries a brilliant place to study. Peace and quiet, no distractions.

This was my favourite spot in Central London to get my head down for a couple of hours. I wonder if anyone recognises it?

wtr_well_n5_a3print.jpg
 
paulfromcamden said:
@gavreid I still find (good) libraries a brilliant place to study. Peace and quiet, no distractions.

This was my favourite spot in Central London to get my head down for a couple of hours. I wonder if anyone recognises it?

wtr_well_n5_a3print.jpg
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Very peaceful...mine was the top floor of the University of London's library at the top of Senate House in Malet Street, WC2...could hear the wind howl but I loved studying there.
 
I think I still have my university library card. It had holes punched in it, and the photo has to be seen to be believed. But I was a bit anarchic in 1976…..
 
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