SocialBib.com - Swap Your Textbooks Online

When you're in college, there's nothing worse than shelling out potential partying funds on a $200 textbook called something like, "Advanced Differential Equations in a Thermal Engineering Framework". Definitely not going to use that one again, unless it's as a beer coaster, are you? If you never again want to be reminded of things like infinite limits, the Platt Amendment, or supply-and-demand graphs, try trading your book on Socialbib.com, a textbook-swapping site that matches up requested books with ones being offered up. Socialbib is an extremely simple application. To get started, register for an account (for free), and enter in the information of the book you're looking to get rid of the one you're in the market for. When there's a match, the site will let you know.

"We're two people who had an idea. We're also two people who wasted a lot of money buying college textbooks.

Our hope is that this site helps students not only save money but to connect with one another. Small things like this can have a tremendous impact if enough students participate. Be sure to tell your friends!"

SocialBib is really easy to use, and you don't have to worry about browsing through pages and pages of ambiguous results like you may have to do on Amazon to find the book you want, since this services matches you up directly with the correct textbook. Registration requires a valid ".edu" email address, so you know the site will retain a certain level of legitimacy.

There are many other ways for students to swap textbooks that might be easier than using a website; for instance, social networks on campus such as greek organizations and sports teams often offer up and request books via their email list procs. Also, some may find it annoying that the shipper has to incur the shipping cost. The site recommends that you try and finagle a books swap on your campus to avoid these extra fees, but since there's no real search engine on the site how can one quickly determine if a particular book is available within their own university? Since the site makes the matches for you, does it also try to match you up with buyers and sellers on your own campus automatically?

SocialBib is working on including proximity into the matches so that you'll be matched up with other students on your campus. There is also a facebook application which helps aid in finding friends with the books you need without having to ask all of them.