With UAF exploring outside businesses for textbook sales, Barnes & Noble is eyeing becoming the next store students buy their books from.

No decisions have been made. The call to outsource was not so much an attempt at doing business, as it was a way of testing the waters of business. However, a look at Barnes & Noble's online bookstore showed some promise to the hope of lower prices.

The national retailer offers the most expensive book required at UAF, "Biology" by Peter Raven and George Johnson, for $154.75, nearly $100 less than the campus bookstore. The second most expensive textbook was $80 cheaper.

The savings averaged around $20 for the other eight most expensive texts required at UAF. However, the numbers did not include bundled items like OWL cards and clickers.

When more texts were searched, the amount saved became less and less along with the UAF Bookstore's price. The art history textbook "Gardner's Art Through the Ages Vol. 2," found at the UAF Bookstore for $110, was selling for $7 less with Barnes & Noble. For books selling for less than $100 at UAF, little to no savings were found with the national chain.

Thanks to their size, wholesale retailers can offer used books more often than small stores like the UAF Bookstore. Since their stock is larger, prices also tend to be cheaper.

Tim Pursell, an assistant professor who previously worked at a campus bookstore at another university, has a number of bones to pick with the UAF Bookstore. Along with being disgruntled over a lack of communication concerning an out of print book he ordered, Pursell is particularly upset over the situation of used books.

"It's outrageous how you can buy new books online cheaper than you can buy used books here," he said. "If they [look around], they might be able to get a wholesale retailer to sell used books."

While the Barnes & Noble Web site shows cheaper prices than what is currently being offered, the amount saved could possibly be negated. The prices found on the site do not include the cost of mailing to the would-be campus bookstore, and shipping to Alaska can be expensive.

The only other organization to express interest in taking over the campus bookstore is the Follett Higher Education Group. Follett currently operates 750 campus bookstores, compared to the 500 Barnes & Noble runs.

It also claims to have the largest collection of used books with more than 2 million copies and more than 100,000 used titles regularly in stock.

Prices were not available for comparison with Follett. As a policy, the highest price a book may be sold back to them is 50 percent of the purchased price.

Whether students would feel comfortable with an outsourced bookstore is another matter all together. Chad Gudschinsky, a mechanical engineering major, said he'd be fine with the switch if the textbooks were cheaper.

"That would actually be really good," he said.

Henry Cole, an member of the ASUAF Senate, opposes outsourcing the bookstore and has sponsored a resolution against the change.

"Turning it [the bookstore] over to a corporation such as Barnes & Noble in an attempt to improve service or cut costs is doomed to failure, because, in addition to performing the same work with the same initial costs, the new bookstore would have to turn a profit for its managers," he said.