NEIU Book Exchange gets upgrade

As some of you may have noticed, NEIU’s Book Exchange recently went through an upgrade. And it’s about time! Not only does the new Book Exchange have its own search capability, but students can also delete their own posts!  Originally started by the 2008-2009 Student Government Association (SGA), the NEIU Book Exchange is an online resource or tool created for NEIU students to easily buy and sell books between each other, and hopefully save money through the transaction. The Book Exchange is simply a forum or means of sharing information – it only matches up buyers and sellers. In short, here’s how the Book Exchange works: 1. Student A posts book 2. Student B searches for book 3. Student B finds book and contacts Student A to meet 4. Student A and Student B meet at NEIU 5. Student A sells book (YAY!) 6. Student B buys book (YAY!) The old Book Exchange site was useful but its functionality was somewhat limited. For instance, the posts were all hosted on Google Spreadsheets and the only way to search through them would be by using your browser’s search feature. Students would have to send email requests to the site administrators (SGA members) in order to delete posts once they had sold their book. Not only was this annoying for students because they had to wait for it to get deleted, it was also an extra task for SGA members as they would have to manually delete the specific post. The new Book Exchange site has a cleaner, simpler look with a user-interface that is much easier to use. The new site also boasts login functionality, allowing students to create an account to manage (edit/delete) their own posts. The new site also features a true search feature which searches by title, ISBN, author’s first name, author’s last name, and even department! The upgrades and improvements were possible due to the hard work of three very bright computer science students, Ronald Mendoza, Zihan Puthawala, and Thiru Selvanayagam The NEIU Book Exchange is a very useful, free resource available to NEIU students. If you’re buying textbooks, it can help save you money (by not having to pay more at Beck’s) and it can help you save time (by not having to wait for books to be shipped if bought online). If you’re selling textbooks, it can help make you more money and save time. By using the Book Exchange, NEIU students meet each other and have the opportunity of making connections with people who already have something in common the class for which the textbook was used. Thus, in a small way, the NEIU Book Exchange also helps cultivate a more closely-knit NEIU community.