There are many good reasons why it would be better if students did not need to purchase Pequods. The University has, in the past, recognized the additional cost that Pequods impose on students in particular classes; especially for students in reading-intensive humanities and social science courses, Pequod packets can add over a hundred dollars to the total cost of enrolling in a course.
In fact, in 2004, the Financial Aid Office increased the books allotment of financial aid packages by $155 to cover the average cost of a Pequod. A more effective method for reducing this financial burden, clearly, would simply be to reduce the need for Pequods.
Furthermore, requiring the purchase of hundreds of packets of photocopies each semester is in sharp tension with the University’s focus on sustainability. Given the University’s overall focus on increasing sustainability — witness the recent printing quota — it would seem obvious for the University to reduce the use of Pequods.
Of course, the University is constrained in this matter by relevant copyright law, and so it may not be possible to completely eliminate the use of Pequods from University courses. Nonetheless, there exist a number of steps that could be taken to remove as many Pequods as possible from shelves. To begin, much of the current content of Pequods may simply be distributed for free to students by uploaded PDFs of the documents to the Course Materials section of Blackboard. There is no reason to make students pay for photocopies of exercises written by the department or of journal articles available for free through library subscriptions.
To the extent that copyright issues do exist, the University can work to expand the library’s Electronic Course Reserve Service. Though there is some cost involved, the e-reserve model presents a far more sustainable model than the Pequod system. Though such efforts are naturally constrained by publishers’ willingness to join the E-Reserve Service, professors, the Princeton Public Library and the Princeton University Library should still explore all avenues to both minimize student costs and to promote sustainability.
These strategies may not succeed at completely eliminating the need for Pequods. They would, however, likely reduce the number of classes in which Pequods are required and reduce the length — and hence the price — of Pequods for classes in which there is no way to distribute all required readings through Blackboard. These strategies would save both money and resources at a minimal cost, and so we encourage the University to adopt them.
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