N a tio n a l N ews
13
February 6,1997
BYU Student Sets Up Book Swap On Web
Colleen DeBaise
Tribune Media Services
PROVO, Utah— John Norton,
a Brigham Young University jun­
ior, was fed up with standing in
long lines at the college bookstore,
only to receive a paltry sum for his
used textbooks.
Then his sister told him about
Utah
State
U n iv ersity ’s
“bookswap,” where students them­
selves can exchange books, negoti­
ate bargains and pocket the change.
That’s when Norton says it hit
him: why not set up a similar stu­
dent book exchange on the Internet?
“If we can do it manually, we
can do it virtually,” Norton said he
remembers thinking.
So, in January, Norton and
childhood friend Hugh Smith, a
1996 BYU graduate, launched a
website (www.bookswap.com)
where students can get together in
cyberspace, compare titles and elec­
tronically wheel-and-deal.
Already 250 students, mostly
from BYU, have registered on the
site, which is available to all Utah
colleges.
“I’ve gotten e-mail messages
from people saying ‘It’s great,’ ‘I’m
excited,’ ‘I just sold my book,’
‘Thanks for putting the service up, ’”
Norton said. “I’ve never had people
say ‘I don’t like it.’”
The site works like this: the
National News courtesy of ttie Tribune
Media Services
seller enters the title of the book
and its asking price — into a data­
base. The buyer can search the da­
tabase for a specific title, compare
prices if there’s more than one
seller, and e-mail an offer to the
seller.
Then it’s up to the students to
do the dickering over the price,
Norton said. “I’m pretty much the
broker,” he said. “I just bring the
buyer and seller together.”
The site, which is free to users,
also offers a feature in which the
buyer receives an automatic e-mail
message when a title they requested
becomes available.
Norton figures that the students
who use the site usually come out
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farther ahead than they would at a business is selling new textbooks,
traditional bookstore.
for which students must pay top
And they don’t have to stand dollar. “I’m just another [choice]
in long lines.
students have to sell their books,”
At BYU, the bookstore buys he said.
textbooks back at 60 percent of the
The next step for Norton, an
retail price, and resells them at 80 information systems major, and
percent.
Smith, who owns his own screenConsidering the average stu­ printing business, is to attract ad­
dent spends about $600each school vertisers to their site. Then they
year on books, any savings is a plan to make the service available
bonus.
to colleges everywhere.
Norton said the BYU book­
“That’s the plan, as soon as
store hasn’t voiced any worries possible,” Norton said.
about him running it out of busi­
Norton’s mother, Sigrid, said
ness. “They have such a big market her son is enjoying his first taste
share,” he said. “It would take a lot being an entrepreneur. “He’s hav­
for me to put a dent in them.”
ing a hard time staying in college,”
Besides, the bookstore’s main she said.
It’s becoming a rite of passage
for
some
teens
and
twentysomethings, but one with an
anxious ’90s twist: the at-home HIV
test.
Though checking for the virus
that causes AIDS is something
many find difficult to broach with
friends and parents, surveys and
interviews indicate that a small but
increasing number of young people
want to know if they are HIV posi­
tive.
But because many also fear
face-to-face encounters at clinics
or hospitals, anonymous testing
options appear to be gaining in
popularity. The Federal Drug Ad­
ministration recently approved two
in-home HFV test kits that are avail­
able over the counter —Confide by
Johnson & Johnson and Home Ac­
cess.
“Just talking about getting
tested was—and still is—^hard to
do with my friends,” says a 22year-old San Jose, Calif., man who
recently tested positive using Con­
fide. The man, who asked not to be
identified, says he took the home
test because he wanted to remain
anonymous and not go to a clinic.
“Choosing to get tested was a
lonely experience,” he says. “The
subject of contracting a life-threat­
ening disease was too frightening
and serious for my friends and I to
even touch.” Counseling has since
helped him deal with the situation.
The Confide and Home Ac­
cess tests require the user to take a
blood sample at home and then
mail it to a lab, which analyzes the
results. The person then calls for
the results. N ^ e s are not used: a
code is used for identification. If
the test comes back positive, a coun­
selor is put on the line to offer
advice. The results can take up to a
week to get. Cost of the kits ranges
from $35 to $50.
Though the companies that
make the kits do not divulge sales
figures, a spokesman for the 32state Walgreen drug stote chain
says sales have risen since the tests
were introduced last summer.
“Overall, we’re seeing good sales
of both Confide and Home Ac­
cess,” says spokesman Michael
Polizin.
With about 40 percent of teens
reporting that they are sexually ac­
tive and nearly half reporting they
do not use condoms, being tested is
more important than ever, health
officials say.
But even though the at-home
tests will likely “attract young
people because they are anony­
mous,” says Marty Grimes of the
ARIS Project in San Jose, “the im­
portance of good pre-test and post­
test counseling is paramount be­
cause most young people do not
have support systems and they make
less rational decisions. Young
people are more likely to jump off
a cliff than talk about living with
HIV.”
It is this need to talk—to get
knowledgeable advice about how
to cope with the situation— tiiat is
at the heart of concerns voiced by
HFV-AIDS counselors like Grimes.
They don’t question the accuracy
of the kits.
“The sides are split about the
counseling,” explains Brenda Lein,
who works with Project Inform in
San Francisco, a group that pro­
vides information about AIDS and
HTV and also acts as a consumer
watchdog. One side believes HTV
testing that doesn’t include faceto- face, pre- and post-test counsel­
ing “may not be valuable, even
dangerous,” she says. “Others ...
believe that HIV testing through
in-home collection provides addi­
tional options to individuals and
has a place in meeting the diverse
needs of our community.”
Both home tests offer overthe-phone counseling, primarily for
people who test positive, but also
for those who don’t.
Groups such as Bay Area
Young Positives in San Francisco
say they worry especially about
adequate pre-test counseling.
“I remember when I first found
out I was positive,” says Antigone
Hodgins, 28, executive director and
founder of Bay Area Young Posi­
tives, a 3-year-old organization that
works with as many as 400 HIVinfected young people throughout
the Bay Area.
“I heard the person tell me, but
then it was like I was off in another
world. I had no pre-test counseling,
I was completely shocked, scared,
I felt lost, I can’t stress Enough that
this sort of testing is not going to be
good enough if it just gets more
young people to test. They need to
make sure the counseling and re­
ferral system is comprehensive, so
that young people can learn to cope
with their results.”
Confide, however, responds to
these concerns by pointing to a
booklet it includes in each kit. The
booklet explains the difference be­
tween HFV and AIDS (acquired
immune deficiency syndrome) and
what causes the disease.
Home Access has counseling
available whenever needed by call­
ing a toll-free number.