Having encountered difficulty purchasing books for his classes, Rutgers College sophomore Rohail Rizvi decided to start his own Web site for the purpose.
Rizvi recently launched a new Web site with which students across the University can buy or sell used textbooks.
"I spent all my savings to develop this site, but I have a lot of faith in it," Rizvi said.
Rizvi said he has seen first hand that buying books can be a hassle.
Besides the enormous amount of money students spend on books every semester, he has also seen how some of his friends are behind in class, because the books they have ordered haven't arrived until weeks later. Such inconveniences inspired him to create Walamu.com.
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To capture his concept of what he wanted the site to look like, he hired a development company - PixelTorch Web Solutions - to lay the site out.
The Web site contains different sections; the primary one is called the Marketplace - a bulletin where people post up what books or notes they want to sell.
"There's no need to deal with shipping either, because everyone is from the Rutgers campus," said Jyoti Pugalia, Rizvi's colleague and Douglass College sophomore.
Ultimately, Rizvi said he wants college students to sell or buy books cost effectively.
The Web site also contains a classified section - where students can post ads for open job positions, apartments or dorms, study groups and even parties or events.
Due to the fact that the Web site has only been open to the University campus so far, Rizvi thinks that there's a greater chance to find the books and notes one needs for a particular course, because there are other students that have taken the same course with the same professors.
Rizvi, however, doesn't just want this Web site to be exclusively for University students.
His ultimate goal, he said, is to have 10,000 registered users, which he hopes will come with the expansion of Walamu to other college campuses and universities nationwide.
Within the first week that the Web site was launched, there were approximately 30 postings for books on sale. As of press time, 24 textbooks were listed in the site's "Marketplace" section, and five items were listed in the site's "Classifieds" section.
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