Despite the ever-rising costs of textbooks, students are still filling up local bookstores and looking for cheap, more affordable options to fit their budgets.

Students might have noticed the longer-than-usual lines in the campus bookstore last week, and bookstore manager Griffin Hite said employees have noticed the surge in traffic, too.

For the first time, university officials offered students the option of charging their textbook purchases to excess funds in their account before disbursement checks are issued for the semester, as long as purchases did not exceed $600.

“We’ve definitely seen a lot more traffic than usual for the first week,” Hite said.

Students were only allowed to charge their purchases through Saturday, Jan. 11, according to an email from Student Financial Services.

The rise could be due to students utilizing the new option, but university officials will not be sure how the service fared until after they see the final numbers. However, Hite said the bookstore typically sees a lot of traffic — just not all at once, like they have this semester.

“Usually, after disbursement checks go out, we see more students,” he said.

Waiting for a refund check is not always an option for some students, though.

“I pay out of pocket for my books, and then I reimburse myself with my refund check,” said senior Jordan Graham.

As a business major, Graham said he usually has to purchase his textbooks from the university bookstore.

“(My textbooks) are UNA editions,” he said. “In the business major, it’s that way with most of the classes.”

But for those textbooks that could possibly be found cheaper, students are looking to other options, such as the Off-Campus Bookstore or a Facebook group called the UNA Student Book Exchange, which currently has more than 1,300 members.

“I came from another university as a transfer student, and I joined (the Facebook group) because the UNA bookstore’s buy-back rate is a joke,” said sophomore Traci Carr. “I would be lucky to get $30 from UNA. I will only buy from the UNA bookstore if I cannot find the book used, because I’m trying to save as much money as possible.”

Letting students utilize their financial aid so early in the semester could be a waste, Carr said.

“I don’t know about other students, but I do have those professors who don’t require that you buy the book, so I always wait until I have been to all of my classes the first week to buy books,” she said. “By then, the offer to use financial aid is over and the checks are usually already issued, so it is a moot point for me.”

While repeated campus-wide emails were sent about the option, Graham said he was unsure of how the new payment option worked and preferred to wait and buy books on his own.

Even though lines have been longer at the university bookstore, traffic has not slowed at the Off-Campus Bookstore, located at the corner of Court and Irvine Streets.

“We haven’t noticed that much of a difference here,” said Store Manager Brad Nichols. “We’ve still had quite a few students come through.”