Tommie creates textbook Web site

Underbooks.com

At a campus near you

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University of St. Thomas senior Nick Bussa tells TommieMedia why he likes Underbooks.com, a student-built Web site that gives textbook-price comparisons from both their university's bookstore and a number of online book distributors.

“It just gives students so many more tools when they’re trying to find textbooks. It would have made it a lot cheaper for me to buy books. ... You can tell even before you sign up for classes what books your class would need and how much it would cost."

The site's creator, Tommie senior Kamal Mohamed, told the news service:

“It’s like a KAYAK.com for books.”

I serves almost all the schools in the Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference as well as the University of Minnesota - Twin Cities, University of Minnesota-Duluth and Concordia University in St. Paul.

(I've written on numerous occasions about the high cost of textbooks, and what students and professors can do to help keep a lid on them. This ambitious effort appears to go way beyond that. I'm curious to see how it works out.)