Bücher und die Bibliothek

Fortunately I have only had to buy one book the entire time I have been in Germany (my German course book). This is pretty typical as almost all readings are online and free, so you do not have to worry about spending more than $30 or not much more depending on major. On the other hand as I have previously talked about, you are expected to do a lot more research by yourself during your time here, which means acquiring information. If you feel like spending money for some reason than there are plenty of bookstores in Heidelberg, although almost all of those are in German. Amazon offers the first alternative, once again it costs money, but you can get kindle books or regular books shipped if there is something specific your are looking for, which is generally pretty cheap and easy. If you are looking for a free source then I use two online ones, which still work in Germany. The first is my UMass account with the library, which still allows me to access academic search engines, which is a major help for English sources. Another easy way to get some quick sources is Googlebooks, which also still works here and you can get some good chapters from books that can be quite useful. Apparently some students have been lack in their choice of sources and their grades have suffered as a result, so I figured I would mention those in case anyone was wondering. I am sure there is more and the Heidelberg library has more online, but to this point I have not used them.

That happens to go nicely into the thing I wanted to talk about next, the library. Hundreds of years old and containing millions of records, it would seem that the library would be an amazing resource to use for research. False. The library like its counterparts in Cambridge and Oxford has held onto to a ridiculous cataloging system from the middle ages, which means it takes forever to try to find anything inside. Fortunately there are many, many other libraries on campus and in the city that you have access to. So you can go to the fancy library and try to figure it out, but I would suggest save yourself the stress and instead just try to find a smaller library you can use more effectively.