Dear Faculty, Staff, and Student
Starting on July 1, 2017, Hostos Community College will be launching a new online bookstore for all textbooks and course materials. Selecting and ordering books will be done completely online and students will have their course materials shipped to them on an individual basis. After a thorough review process, Akademos was selected as our exclusive vendor for these services. Akademos currently serves Queens College, John Jay College, Medgar Evers College, and the CUNY School of Law and has provided students at those CUNY colleges with many low cost textbook options and significant savings to date.
What are the benefits of moving to an online bookstore for faculty? The Online Bookstore will streamline the adoption process for faculty and administrators, making it easy to select and adopt course materials for class. Through the Adoption Portal, faculty can:
- Login using their CUNYfirst credentials and see only the courses they are assigned to teach. The information that is uploaded to the bookstore will transfer back to CUNYfirst within 48 hours.
- Search for textbooks by ISBN or book title
- Create a custom Coursepack
- Access a portfolio of next-generation, low-cost courseware providers through Akademos Curriculum Services
- View previous course and departmental history and other recommendations
- Review book details prior to adoption
- Add ancillary materials, course notes and files
- List real-time pricing and availability for materials
What are the benefits of moving to an online bookstore for students? The Online Bookstore will save students money and offers an easy way to order their books in less than 5 minutes. Key features include:
- A personalized course page showing only the courses they registered for with all corresponding course materials
- A wide variety of low cost textbook formats including new, used, eBooks, and rentals
- A peer-to-peer Marketplace, where students can save an average of 60% off list price
- A price match guarantee on new books so students won’t pay more if they find a lower price elsewhere (Fall 2017)
- Listings from top selling textbook websites in the Marketplace for easy price comparisons. Students will always get the right book at the lowest price, even if they choose to shop on third-party sites.
- Access to year-round online buyback through the bookstore’s website
More information regarding the Online Bookstore and the new textbook adoption process will be coming soon. We thank you in advance for your cooperation and assistance in promoting the new store to students.
Sincerely,
Esther Rodriguez-Chardavoyne
Senior Vice President of Administration & Finance