Do students deface library books?
By Eucalyptus
@Eucalyptus (151)
May 9, 2012 3:59pm CST
At my university, there's a real problem with students defacing books. This isn't necessarily drawing silly pictures on the pages, but usually highlighting text and underlining things in pen. This REALLY annoys me, not only because the book doesn't belong to them but underlining text and highlighting certain phrases disrupts reading patterns and the ability to digest information. Is this a problem where you study? When you borrow a book and find pencil marks in it, do you erase them carefully or just leave the book in the state that it's in?
1 person likes this
4 responses
@collectingstardust (94)
• United States
10 May 12
At my university the library books aren't often written on. The used books that students can buy from the bookstore are another story. To turn a bad situation into a good situation, look at it this way. In my experience the highlighting on books is often of the important material. So the highlights and underlined text can actually be helpful in your studies!
@Eucalyptus (151)
•
10 May 12
I really wish that was the case :( Unfortunately I study International Relations and so a lot of the books are shared by people across different disciplines, which means what's relevant to them isn't what I'm looking for :(
@allyoftherain (7208)
• United States
9 May 12
I've run into this problem when I'm reading textbooks that are used or from the library. For novels and other non-fiction, I've only seen it in very few used-bought books. It annoys me to no end as well! I think it's actually harder to study and remember something when it has all those crazy note-markings on it. If I can erase the marks, then I will, but lots of defacing is done in pen and highlighter where I can't get rid of it. I think it's really disrespectful to mark up a book that you don't own. If it's a used text-book that I bought, it's not so bad because it was once a personal copy, but the library books getting written in is just sad.
@edisonbanglos (389)
• Philippines
9 May 12
so far i haven't observed books in our library that was highlighted and drawn.. inside the library we have CCTV cameras everywhere and I think my fellow students are fully oriented about the rules of using the library :))
