History professor Sarah Igo has high standards for her students of American intellectual history.
For her upper-level seminar, Igo assigned two out-of-print primary texts. The books are not available at any bookstore near Penn's campus and finding the books for class, she said, is up to the students.
Faced with the challenges of tracking down hard-to-find books, students are increasingly turning to online versions to complete their coursework.
In the case of Igo's class, several students in the class found an online version of the 1887 novel What Katy Did and are using it in place of the rare hard copy.
While professors say it is impossible to calculate the exact number of out-of-print books assigned for Penn courses each year, History professor Robert St. George said his department assigns them "all the time."
Ninety-five percent of all books ever published are now out of print, according to Houghton Mifflin spokesman Collin Earnst. As far as he knows, no book has ever been reprinted due to demand from college educators.
Most major bookstores near Penn's campus -- including the Penn Bookstore, the Penn Book Center and the House of Our Own Bookstore -- do not accept professors' requests to carry out-of-print books.
Representatives from all three bookstores said they only order texts from wholesale providers, so once a publisher stops printing a book they have no way to order it.
But St. George said he expected that students could look for out-of-print books online.
Online copies of books typically go for $5 or $6, part of a growing electronic text industry worth about $2.3 million last year.
Penn's libraries offer free copies of over 750 electronic books, including What Katy Did.
As more and more Penn professors assign texts that students are forced to find online, professors are thinking carefully before placing book orders through campus bookstores.
"It used to be that you would order 25 books for a class of 24 students," St. George said. "Now only five people actually buy the books, so the bookstore owners have a harder time."
Groups like the American Council for Learned Societies -- an umbrella organization for scholarly societies -- sponsor initiatives to convert books into electronic form.
Still, Penn Book Center textbook manager Bill Greene said that "it's hard to say" if a growing electronic media market has affected his business.
The differences in price between online booksellers and local bookstores "seem kind of random," he added.
Reading online - Students are increasingly turning to online texts for their course books - Penn's libraries offer about 750 electronic books, many of them for history and English classes - Most eBooks cost between $5 or $6 when purchased online
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