Students everywhere have been hit hard by the financial crisis. Many have lost student loans, and all have to consider the difficulty of entering a volatile job market after graduation. In these tough economic times, everyone is trying to find ways to cut spending.

We have found that buying and selling textbooks online can save some serious dollars. Last semester, the Tribune reported that BookMarq usually buys back books for only about 50 percent of their sale price. Finding bargains online increases the chance that students will get most of their money back at the end of the semester, and often books can be sold online for much more than campus bookstores will offer.

Unfortunately, BookMarq tries to prevent bargain-seeking students from turning elsewhere for their academic needs. By refusing to disclose International Standard Book Numbers (ISBN) and not releasing complete textbook information, BookMarq makes it difficult for students to be certain that they buy the right book.

For those who are unfamiliar with the term, an ISBN is a unique identifying number that is assigned to every book published. Publishing ISBNs for course materials allows students to search Web sites like Amazon.com or Half.com to find books at the best rate.

The garbled and abbreviated titles, truncated author lists and frequently missing edition numbers provided by BookMarq and Sweeney's can make finding course materials online a challenge. It is easy to buy the wrong edition or the wrong book entirely when working with incomplete information.

Fortunately, federal legislation called the Higher Education Opportunity Act was recently revised to require universities to disclose ISBN numbers and retail prices for course materials. All universities receiving any federal dollars must meet the new requirements by July 1, 2010. While it is unfortunate that the federal government has to prod the university to treat students fairly, relief is on the horizon for financially burdened students.

Until the legislation goes into effect, we recommend that students contact their professors and request that they send out ISBN numbers so that students can find the best deal on course materials. A number of professors already make this a habit, and we encourage other professors to do the same. Students could all use a little extra cash, and going online to find books is a good way to cut spending.