Earlier this month, the new and improved Book Exchange 2.0 was launched just in time for students to buy their fall semester books. This new site features a similar layout as the first book exchange, but the sole programmer, Ian Kellogg, a junior in electrical engineering here at PSU, says he started over from scratch to make this 2.0 version superior. Here are the major improvements:

• Book searches instead of listing searches (making it easier to find the book you are looking for and someone selling it)
• Selling books has become an easier and more efficient process
• Images of books are now available
• Selling histories are now sortable and navigable

These improvements to Penn State’s personalized textbook-buying site come on the heels of the introduction of Amazon Prime being offered free to students and the introduction of a bill to the PA House of Representatives, which would require PA universities to evaluate the “educational soundness and price of textbooks” and force textbook publishers to detail changes in editions.

Due to lackluster advertising, Book Exchange 2.0 hasn’t seen a rise in traffic from its predecessor, and sites like Amazon and Chegg see more use. However, the more students that use the program, the more successful and valuable it will become.

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