Buying books - copyrights important?

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I am desperately trying to find books the cheapest way possible. But I need help. How important is the copyright date of a textbook? My school requires certain editions...but the copyright dates are so new...like 2011 and 2012. I feel like I am up to my eyeballs searching b/c I am finding the right editions but the copyright is off by year or even 6months!

The other that is so frustrating is finding cd and study guides to match! Help....:confused:

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Specializes in I'd like to get into neonatal or ob-gyn.

from what I've looked into, as long as the ISBN number and the edition matches, the publishing dates or copyright dates are irrelevant. It should be the same book.

I too was trying to save money on books, and I've come across the same edition but different publishing/copyright dates.

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I've used older editions and all was well.

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Specializes in OB/women's Health, Pharm.

As a faculty member who assiogns those books, you should be Ok if you are only one edition behind. But please, whatever you do, do not complain (and give yourself away) when the page numbers for the readings in the syllabus don't match your book. Just use the index.

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My program still has the page numbers of the previous edition in our notes. It drives me crazy when I spend the $$ for the new edition and find I would have been at an actual advantage with the older edition.

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Specializes in OB/women's Health, Pharm.

superV:

Just FYI: Going through and changing all the page numbers is a huge job that takes hours. If a new edition comes out just before the start of a new semester or quarter, the faculty may not have had time to edit the page numbers. Or, sometimes the bookstore gets a newer edition, and fails to tell the faculty. The first heads up we get occurs when we see that your book doesn't look like our older books, after the syllabus is already done.

Some faculty have proposed that we could save ourselves hours of work by just assigning the entire chapter, and leaving it up to you to figure out if you really need to read the whole thing. I think that's a bit cruel, and go through and may it clear what to focus on, and what to skip. It takes time, and we are NOT paid for time spent on things like this.

Before you jump on faculty, keep in mind that some of them who are APNs like me could make $20K more elsewhere. We do the job because we love nursing, and want to pass our values and knowledge on to you.

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Just follow the ISBN and the edition and you'll be fine.

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