cost of books for ma course

my course is an ma in librarianship. i'm wondering what approximately i can expect to spend on books. how much has anyone spent on a similar course? thanks.

Borrow them!

um...£0. All the books I ever needed for my library course I got from the uni library. And there were no "assigned readings" per se, it was basically "here's the lecture, now go off on your own and read some related stuff so you can pass your assessment."  I don't know how they do things at Sheffield, but that was my experience anyway.

We had to buy a copy of the AACR2, which was quite expensive since they update it every year so you can't really get an old one.  My prof. didn't make my class get Sears, but they had a rental program at our book store because it crazy expensive. 

We had actual books we had to buy, as well as articles to read in the library. I think I probably spent about 300 a semester.  I sold them to others on my course, so I got most of my money back.

Less than I spent in undergrad, but that was in the States. 

I spent 6 pounds. We had to buy one book for a class and I bought it second hand from one of the girls who took the course last year. And in retrospect I probably could have just borrowed it from the library. Other than that, my experience was like Andrea's. I used the uni library and online resources to get everything I needed. There were no assigned books for any other class. I did spend a lot of money making photocopies and printing off journals, but it was still a manageable amount.

I didn't have to buy any for my Modern History course a few years ago (though I did buy a couple just for fun ).  My librarianship course is a bit different since I'm doing it through distance learning.  I buy some of the books just for convenience's sake (in case I borrow them and they're recalled), but even then I haven't spent nearly as much as I did on my undergraduate degrees in the US.

I haven't bought a single book for my MSc course - almost all of my reading and research has been via research papers in journals. In addition to not buying any books, I have only borrowed 3 from the library in total. All of the papers have been available online via the university journal catalogue.

In fact, as an undergrad in the UK, I only bought 3 books in 3 years and the only year I had to buy any others was when I was in the US - that was a total of about £150 in 4 years of study!