Blog assignment #9

Now a day you can get cheaper books online then you can get at the campus bookstore. I looked up some of the books that we need for this class and I found that to buy the books new online was just as cheep as buying them form the bookstore used. I got waiting for Godot for $9 and it was $9.60 online, Einstein’s clocks was $11 at the book store and $10 online and house of leaves was $15 at the bookstore and $13 on the internet. Not this doesn’t count S&H so the prices would be higher online if I bought them individually but if you get over $20 on amazon you can get free shipping, and I would say that any school semester you can spend more then $20. When I searched for the books it was incredibly easy and the books came up almost immediately. I think that more and more people use an online book supplier to get their books because it is cheeped and just as quick, in the future I’m sure that the campus bookstore will have to find a way to compete for the sales of online books, especially used ones by lowering prices. The problem comes in that UMKC will not suffer any loss because if they start loosing money in the bookstore they will just raise the price of parking or tuition to make up the difference. The only reason that I could see that someone would chose to buy at the bookstore id if they can get used books that are a better deal or I think the main reason is for ease. Either way you have to go to the book store to find out what books you need and then go online to get them, I think that some people just get them there because it is faster and easier just to buy there then to go home and order it when the book will not come in a couple of weeks and you might need it sooner. I do think that the move to getting books online is headed for more and more of an online approach but in the terms of student services it will take much longer to weed out the feeling of talking to a person. When I have had problems with the university I have always just gone to talk to someone, not that I don’t know that I can call but talking to someone is a lot nicer then over the phone, and even talking to someone is a million times nicer then talking to no one over the internet. In the service department they will always need people because we need that face-to-face contact to communicate, for now at least. If this did ever go completely over then Internet I think that a lot of information is lost in the translation of the typed word. With no tone, pitch or smiles people loose the feeling part of the message and then we live in a cold lifeless world. I’m not saying that is UMKC student services go computerized it would be similar to the apocalypse but it would be close and I’m just not ready to accept that, yet.