Mike Hoefer, Government of the Student Body director of student affairs, is in the early planning stages to possibly develop a website that would allow students to sell textbooks and other items to fellow ISU students.

“There are a lot of Iowa State students who have things to sell, and there are a lot of Iowa State students who are looking to buy things,” Hoefer said. “Anything from textbooks, to tickets, to clothes, furniture … even rent places to live.”

Hoefer said there is not currently a good method of connecting the buyers and the sellers.

“From an economic standpoint, that’s a huge market inefficiency,” Hoefer said. “There’s not perfect information, if you will.”

Hoefer noted there are several things developed by students to try to combat this issue, including several Facebook groups such as Free and For Sale at ISU, Ames Clothing Swap and Sell, ISU Ticket Trader and Iowa State Textbook Exchange.

Hoefer said there are several problems with using Facebook groups, including the groups that have a running list where a textbook for sale could quickly end up at the bottom of the page and become hard to find. In addition, you cannot search or filter through the page.

He also said those looking to buy something would constantly have to monitor groups to decide who has the best deal.

“A lot of people aren’t able to find what they’re looking for and they default to more expensive options, like buying tickets directly from Ticketmaster, buying books from the bookstore,” Hoefer said.

Hoefer said he is currently in the stage of looking for different options to manage the site. One of which would be something similar to upennpost.com, which Hoefer calls a Craigslist site for University of Pennsylvania students.

Another potential website is Textbook Friend, which serves colleges all across the country, including Duke University, Rutgers University and New York University.

Hoefer said benefits of Textbook Friend are that it is free and it would be open only to ISU students.

“So right now the Textbook Friend site only covers textbooks, and that’s why we’re keeping our options open,” Hoefer said.

Hoefer also said Textbook Friend allows students to search by department and class.

Hoefer said having GSB develop a new website is also an option. 

He said ideally the goal is to have a website to serve as a medium for all sorts of transactions, not just textbooks.

Hoefer said the next step will be to develop a survey to gauge student input.

“Maybe the Facebook groups are an effective way of exchange,” Hoefer said. “Maybe I’m missing something there.”

Kaylynn Bland, one of the administrators for the Iowa State Textbook Exchange Facebook group, approves of using student activity fee dollars for the site, but doesn’t believe in raising the student activity fee simply to fund a new site.

“I don’t think many of the students would want to be charged additional fees to create a site like this when we can use Facebook and stuff like that,” Bland said. 

She said it was great that an official site is being looked into and thinks it would be a great way to get more students involved.  

“My page only has about 400 and some students, and then another one has about 1800,” Bland said.