Friday, October 01, 2010

What it takes to complete a textbook request form...

Well in advance of each new semester, faculty members are asked to indicate what textbooks students will be required to purchase. A surprising amount of texts need to be coordinated to fill in a textbook request form. For mine, just submitted, it was:
  • Email transmitting the new form
  • New textbook request form: the document I'm "writing"
  • Last semester's textbook request form: to copy/pasting textbook info
  • Publisher's website: to see if a new edition will be available
  • Amazon pages (3): to gauge cost to students
  • University Class Schedule: to check section numbers, course cap
Oh, and I ended up having to email the publisher rep to ask about the new edition's ISBN. To inform her of the spring semester start date, I had to look that up as well (USFP website). We had a few additional exchanges about an an electronic exam copy, which would require re-setting my password on the publisher's "for faculty" access. Then I emailed the admin assistant back.

So, in total, 16 documents were needed to write a little under 100 words in a new form and transmit that form back to the admin assistant.