Some professors have devised various ways of getting around book shortages.

"That's what [library] reserves are for. We do a lot of handing out and xeroxing of materials," says McKay Professor of Applied Mathematics Anthony G. Oettinger '51, who determinedly assigned homework last week in his General Education 156 class, even though the books weren't yet in the Coop.

"In some ideal world where supply and demand can be matched, that wouldn't be a problem, but I don't know of any such world," Oettinger said.

Both Oettinger and Menzel Professor of Astrophysics David Layzer limited their course enrollments. Oettinger took the 25 students who turned in their homework the second day of class. Layzer took the first 155 who signed up for Science A-18, "Space, Time and Motion".

Other classes, including Pellegrino University Professor Edward O. Wilson's Science B-15 and Maier Professor of Political Economy Benjamin M. Friedman's Economics 1580, Literature and Arts B-54: "Chamber Music," and Literature and Arts B-10: "Introduction to Art and Architecture," were lotteried this fall.

"[Not having enough books] is a problem unless you have absolutely fixed enrollment," Oettinger says.

Other professors say they do not mind the problems inherent in shopping period.

"I think this is a good system," says Baird Professor of History Richard Pipes, whose packed Core class on Russia was forced to change rooms this semester. "It's an old tradition and institution."

"It's just part of life," Pipes says. "From experience I sort of assume roughly one third who show up at the first or second lecture will not enroll."

But according to officers at the Coop and the sourcebook office, even limited enrollments do not keep the books from selling out.

"A major headache is when there's a lottery," Witt says. "If there's going to be a lottery and a professor assigns something at the beginning of class, the students buy source-books and end up getting lotteried out."

"Then we have to make a decision whether to refund their money," Witt continues. "Basically we have to throw [returned sourcebooks] away."

Workers at the Coop textbook department are also frustrated by post shopping period returns.

"Those students who do shop a course and later decide to drop the course generally purchase a textbook or textbooks," Powell says. "Students coming by later on look for the textbook and it might not be there, so we reorder the book."

"All of a sudden we have the reorder in, and we have the returned book," Powell says. "What we end up doing is a lot of reordering books even though we then get returns later on."