A Student Government-led initiative to ship unwanted books overseas is preparing to begin collection. The plan calls for collected books to be sent to Al-Anbar University in Iraq, one of NCSU’s partner institutions.

Senior Class President Jay Dawkins said before he heard about the link between the University and Al-Anbar University he was working with the military and a contact on the ground to get used textbooks to students who need them in Iraq.

“If the book is valuable, we’ll send it across,” Dawkins, a junior in engineering, said.

Tim Lipka, a senior in political science, said the collection points could be the bookstore, the Brickyard, the residence halls or the fields.

“When students go to the bookstore for buyback, and the bookstore can’t buy the book back, we’ll hold them,” Lipka said.

Dawkins said the inspiration for the project came from a conversation between himself, Lipka and Kevin Howle, a student body president during the 1980’s. He said Howle had a project in his tenure to send books to the Philipines.

Lipka said after the conversation with Howle, he and Dawkins were talking and asked each other why can’t Student Government do something similar by sending books to Iraq.

Lipka said the first phase was a “Can we do it?” phase.

“Once we figured out it is possible we were able to move on,” he said.

Lipka said the second phase is planning where the collection will take place.

“We have a meeting with the head of the bookstore tomorrow to discuss the possiblity of collecting books at the bookstore,” he said.

Likpka said phase four, storage and distribution, depends of phase three — collection.

“If we get six books, we can send them UPS, but if we get 600, we may need a place to store the books,” Lipka said.

Student Body President Jim Ceresnak, a junior in political science, said the project is a great way to use textbooks for good elsewhere.

“It may face challenges, but it will be successful and start a good tradition,” he said.

Lipka said the project’s purpose is to improve the quality of education.

“It shows we want to work with partner schools and make sure everyone gets a quality education,” he said.

“We should be able to collect books during exams,” Lipka said.

He also said the books may or may not be at their new home by the begining of next semester.

“If they are going halfway around the world, it may take a while for them to get there,” he said.

Dawkins said another part of the project is an end of the year survey to go along with ClassEval.

“This survey will give the students a chance to evaluate their textbooks,” Dawkins said.

He said the survey is going to try and probe the problems of textbooks.

“The survey is going to try and help solve the problems that exist — that of teachers assigning books that aren’t read and how some professors frequently change editions of the text,” Dawkins said.

He said the survey will ask students to log in, select their required texts, and then rate them on readability, usability and necessity.

Dawkins said the results will then be compiled and given to teachers.

He said the bookstore and the library will also be shown the results to see about increased buyback, e-books and availibility.

“In some cases, the bookstore can only buy back a book for five dollars, we want to give students more options when students are getting rid of their book,” Dawkins said.