The days of going to the UVU bookstore, pen and paper in hand, to find textbooks and compare prices is over. Students can now find the exact textbooks they need at the most competitive prices by logging onto their UVLink and looking up their class schedule.
“I noticed the other day when I was looking over my schedule that there is a link at the bottom left of the screen labeled ‘book match’ so I clicked on it,” Heidi Reed, a junior studying English Literature, said. “It took me to the bookstore’s website where it had all the textbooks that my professors ordered and a list of all the online competitors and their prices.”
The new bookstore feature is more of an update on what has been available online for a few years now. Students in the past have been able to go online, enter their course reference numbers—the CRN—and find the exact books assigned by their teachers and order them through the bookstore online. Now the site has expanded to show other online sellers who offer the same book and what price they’re asking for it. Other vendors include Amazon, Follett and Half.com. Each vendor is ranked by price, lowest to highest.
“It’s kind of nice to have it that easy to find,” Madison Johnson, sophomore studying biology, said. “I used to go to the bookstore, search for all of my classes, write down everything on the tag about the book, like author, edition, price, publisher, and then go up to the computer lab and get on a bunch of different sites to see if the prices were any better. This saves me so much time.”
The new book match tool shows what UVU bookstore is offering the textbook for at both new and used prices, then gives the option to order online and pick up in the store on campus. It also lets you make a direct purchase from the other sellers.
“It’s nice because sometimes you’d think you were buying the right book,” Devin Sanderson, a senior studying business, said, “but you weren’t. I bought the wrong editions a couple of times because I thought I knew what I was looking for. It’s also nice because it has the prices with the shipping and handling so you can add up how much it’s actually going to cost. I thought buying one of my books on Amazon would be cheaper until I realized that it would cost the same at the bookstore if I included shipping and handling. And I could pick it up at the bookstore whenever I need it and not wait for some dude in Connecticut or Florida to send it to me.”
To find your textbooks using the book match tool, just log onto your UVLink, select the student tab, go to the “attending class” link and click on “my list of classes” on the right-hand side. Once there you can click on the link to book match.
