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Where to ask about books needed for course

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  • 29-06-2015 7:45am
    #1
    GreasyBaconCat
    Registered Users Posts: 45 ✭


    Is there an official or central place I can ask at the university about which books I will need for a first year course? Or is it up to the individual lecturers?


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    #2
    mickstupp
    Registered Users Posts: 1,764 ✭✭✭mickstupp


    You could check the first year handbooks? Most of them are available on each department's website somewhere. May be very difficult to find, though, because they recently made the entire domain intensely un-user-friendly.

    Bear this in mind though: lecturers can often change their courses slightly from year to year. In some courses that might mean changing translations of a text every year, even if the text nominally stays the same, just to keep things interesting for themselves.

    So take the handbooks and booklists as a guideline, not a definite. You usually get handed the booklists, or pointed to them, in the first class.

    I would also like to be a bollocks at this stage and say, don't trust anyone trying to sell you second hand books, no matter what assurances they give you, until you see the actual official booklists. Lot of people every year get stung with books they either don't need, or got the wrong editions/translations of.


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    #3
    GLaDOS
    Moderators, Regional East Moderators Posts: 23,223 Mod ✭✭✭✭GLaDOS


    I'd wait and see if you really need a hard copy of the book and even then try and get it from the library. If you just need it for revision etc you might be able to just use an ebook. College textbooks can be incredibly expensive and you may only actually read a couple of chapters from it. Probably depends what course you're doing.

    Cake, and grief counseling, will be available at the conclusion of the test



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    #4
    mickstupp
    Registered Users Posts: 1,764 ✭✭✭mickstupp


    ^Actually yeah, that's another thing definitely worth mentioning.

    There's also EBRARY and a few other library sites that you can find many books you'll need free of charge once you're a registered student. Don't be running off to buy everything you think you need, even second hand.

    There are also apparently mythical places, or so I hear, where you can find various wonderful money-saving objects. The googlefindifier may be of use in your travels.


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