Evelyn Gonzales, a sociology major at Sac State, went to the Hornet Bookstore only to find that many of the books she needed were not there.

What are students supposed to do if their books are not available when school starts?”We usually suggest any of the other college bookstores in the area or standard bookstores like Barnes and Noble or Borders- any place that sells books,” said Kristen Gunn, a student assistant at the Hornet Bookstore.

Places like Off Campus Books on College Town Drive can try and get books from their six other stores if the book is not available, and also offer the same books at cheaper prices.

“What we do is we have a contract with the bookstore on campus,” said Christine Lewandowski, manager of Off Campus Books.

“The campus gives us adoptions, which are hard copies of the requests from the teachers. So we both get the same exact thing, but unfortunately, the bookstore gets updated and we don’t. It’s hard to keep up but we try our best,” Lewandowski said.”The quickest way (to get your books) nowadays is actually using the Internet because you can get them the second day,” Lewandowski said.

Professor Magagnini of Journalism 130, also suggested to his class that they could order the books over the Internet on Amazon.com.

An order made on Amazon.com on Jan. 31, for The Reporter’s Handbook using priority next day air, wasn’t expected to be delivered until Feb 8 through 15.

According to Fay Saelee, a student working at the Sac State Library checkout desk, no one has ever asked her if they could check out a textbook because they couldn’t get one at the bookstore for their class.

“If we have the book the student can check it out,” Saelee said.

So why is it so hard to get your books? Do the teachers order the books, and if so, how do they decide how many to order?

“Generally the teachers order through us (the Hornet Bookstore) first. They usually order books based on how many people they expect in class,” Kristen Gunn said.

“So if the teacher expects 25 students, we order 25 books for the class,” Gunn said.Teachers also have deadlines to order their books for their classes.

“Yes actually there are (deadlines). For example, if it is the fall semester, they are supposed to order by the end of October, but it is not a met deadline, usually,” Gunn said.In certain cases, the teacher changes before the class starts, and so the order is placed after the deadline.

“Sometimes the department will order the books for the class, but if the teacher changes, then the teacher will generally want something different, then we would have to place a different order, which can take longer,” Gunn said.

Lack of book availability has been a problem for a long time.

“Quite a bit (of books have not been available) because there are some teachers who say the reason they haven’t ordered their books is because there is another teacher using it-that is a distinct problem,” Gunn said.

Another possibility is “that the teacher thinks that they ordered it, and we never received an order, sometimes they don’t do it directly-they put it through their department and the department sends it to us and sometimes there is a miscommunication between that,” Gunn said.

“Or there was an added section and the teacher forgot to turn around and say, ?I need so many copies for this section.? That frequently does happen,” Gunn said.Evelyn Gonzales eventually did find her books, but not until after shopping at three different bookstores.

“Something has to be done about this situation,” Gonzales said. “I never had this problem when I went to American River College.”