Past graduates of the College say their academic experiences reflect Murphy's assessment that source books have become more commonplace in the social sciences since their time at Harvard.

"My public finance courses, Economics 10 and all my intermediate economics courses were all textbook-oriented," says Tom N. Ambrose '72, an economics concentrator, who adds that sourcebooks were uncommon in his other related courses.

Emile S. Godfrey '72, a Black Studies concentrator, says his experiences also used textbooks.

"I was in the first class with Black Studies, so there were quite a few source materials used in my courses. But overall my sense is still [that] more textbooks [were used then] than the amount used in classes today," Godfrey says.

What Professors Want

Murphy says that the decisive factor in what text professors choose for their course depends solely on what the professor is trying to achieve in the classroom.

"The professors or Faculty select what they want based on their experience and what they want to teach in the classroom," Murphy says. "It's really tailored towards the class."

Mendelsohn says that once photocopying made creating sourcebooks relatively more affordable, professors chose texts based on their vision for the course.

"Now we can mix our own materials," Mendelsohn says. "It allows for a much better match for the materials that we want to think about and the materials that are available."

Murphy believes that sourcebooks will only grow in popularity as publishers become accustomed to their presence in universities.

"The big issue is that all the parts of the sourcebooks have to be copy-righted," Murphy says. "It's a time consuming, detail-oriented process."

Murphy adds that the process grows even more tedious and expensive when professors have to deal with publishers unfamiliar with the concept of the sourcebook.

"You don't have a lot of publishers knowing how to deal with costs from a copyright point of view--it's not a standardized textbook," Murphy says. "When they're in control of the publishing, they know how much they have to pay the author. But when they do it in piecemeal fashion, they don't know how many professors will pick that one chapter."

But Murphy says he believes that the relatively recent growth in the classroom use of sourcebooks will be "a long-term thing."

"If this becomes part of the publishing industry, pricing should become more in line," Murphy says. "That's the uniqueness of a sourcebook--each one varies and so does the cost. As sourcebooks becomes less expensive, students can only benefit."