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Culture
Tired of using Facebook groups for buying and selling old school books? New website offers a simple platform for Copenhagen’s many students
A new website ‘reBOOK’ lets students upload their old school books to sell them, and then browse the website for the books they need.
Once you find the book you are looking for, you send the seller an e-mail and further correspondence will take place between the two parties without any interference from the website.
“Being students ourselves, we realized that a lot of money is being spent on university books that are hardly used after a semester. When trying to sell our own books, we saw that the current services people use just aren’t living up to the user-friendly portals we are used to on the internet,” the creators of the website, Jesper Henrichsen, Halfdan Justesen, Rane Eriksen and Jacques Holst write to the University Post.
While many students use Facebook groups to redistribute used books, it can often be a confusing affair as there tend to be many groups, and messages can end up in the ‘Other’ inbox where they sit unnoticed for weeks.
One of the goals in creating reBOOK was to offer students a simplified way of getting rid of old books and getting hold of new ones. The users of the website are mainly students in the Copenhagen area. The creators’ initial aim was to provide a service to students at the IT University, but it turned out there was a greater need.
“Students, no matter what university they come from, use much of the same literature. So we started to see students from Copenhagen Business School, University of Copenhagen, Technical University of Denmark and other universities using the service as well,” the creators of the website say.
To buy a book students have to make a ‘handshake’. The handshake button is situated to the right of each book and enables students to send an email to the owner.
ReBOOK is free to use, and while it is still a very new project it currently holds 306 books for sale and has already helped 50 books find new owners.
“Our site is new so we are completely dependent on students’ willingness to try the site. We are working towards making students in the Copenhagen area aware of reBOOK and encourage them to actively use the site,” say the founders of the website to the University Post.
The students behind behind reBOOK are at the IT University and at the University of Copenhagen, and the website is sponsored by the IT University’s student-driven café, Café Analog.
universitypost@adm.ku.dk
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