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I'm planning to cycle to school. Textbooks twice the size of a telephone directory are not really compatible with this aim. Ideally I'll fit what I need for the day in a messenger bag.

Don't suppose anyone has any experience with having Kinkos or similar rebind these books into say five smaller volumes.

I presume only bringing the case at hand to school would not be a major obstacle to study? Anyone have any experience with this?

My advice: Get a bigger bag.

You can definitely rebind books, quite a few people in my section did that second semester. You just split it into sections and bring the sections you're studying to school. Only problem would be if the professor jumps from front to back to middle of the book frequently (which one of my professors did).

However, rebinding is expensive. I think one person estimated it at the cost of an extra brand new casebook (so $130-180) for all four of her books to be rebound.

viking138 wrote:You can definitely rebind books, quite a few people in my section did that second semester. You just split it into sections and bring the sections you're studying to school. Only problem would be if the professor jumps from front to back to middle of the book frequently (which one of my professors did).

However, rebinding is expensive. I think one person estimated it at the cost of an extra brand new casebook (so $130-180) for all four of her books to be rebound.

That's helpful. I guess I'll learn pretty quickly if a prof is going to do that.

I figured the cost would be in that region, but I'll save half of that in gas over a semester and be using commute time as exercise time so free . For me it's worth it.

Thanks.

Why not just do your reading at school and leave the books there, taking one at a time home as needed? This expense does not seem necessary.

seatown12 wrote:Why not just do your reading at school and leave the books there, taking one at a time home as needed? This expense does not seem necessary.

Firstly, if I cycle, that would leave my cycling home in the dark. Obviously in midwinter that's going to happen anyway, but I'd rather avoid it when I can. Secondly family reasons mean I want to be home in early evening and study again after dinner.

Sure the expense may be unnecessary, but I think the value it offers will be worth it, to me at least. Ymmv.

I had a friend who didn't rebind per se, but took the covers off of her casebooks, punched holes in pages and put them in smaller binders. Seemed to work for her, and without all the expense of having them rebound.

Get a motorcycle

I didn't do this but know lots of people who did. I am fairly sure they paid something like $20-30 per book, so yeah, for four classes or so it could add. I think it is definitely worth it if you're going to be biking to school though. You'll probably recoup that money pretty quickly in gas/public transportation fares.

It was occasionally a problem, especially in classes where there's an appendix that gets referred to a lot (some casebooks have rules and model codes and the like in the back). But nothing you can't anticipate and work around.

i did this both semesters. i would really recommend it. the first semester i went to a real bookbinder, and that was really expensive. the second semester i went to village copier, which is like a kinko's or something, and they did it for about $30/book.

occasionally the professors referred to parts of the book that i didn't have, but it was infrequent enough that i didn't really care. if i really wanted to see, someone would've shared with me.

check out if your school has lockers and then leave that awful shit there at night

somewhatwayward wrote:i did this both semesters. i would really recommend it. the first semester i went to a real bookbinder, and that was really expensive. the second semester i went to village copier, which is like a kinko's or something, and they did it for about $30/book.

occasionally the professors referred to parts of the book that i didn't have, but it was infrequent enough that i didn't really care. if i really wanted to see, someone would've shared with me.

+1 to everything here, except for I didn't try a real bookbinder first.

If you're reading a casebook you're doing it wrong