New business offers free notes over the Internet

by Laura Anderson and Karen Jagiello
Daily Illini reporter

In the age of the Internet, the new company Versity.com has created competition for two local businesses.

I-Notes and Notes-n-Quotes sell lecture notes to University students, whereas the new Versity.com Web site offers notes for certain classes for free.

The local businesses have said they are not feeling the competition quite yet. Katie Leitherer, junior in LAS and employee at Notes-n-Quotes, said she doesn’t think Versity.com has detracted from sales. Both I-Notes and Notes-n-Quotes said they do not see Versity.com as a large competitor.

Versity.com offers free notes for 18 University classes which students can call up instantly. Notes-n-Quotes charges $28.95 for a semester subscription of notes and $2.25 for individual lecture notes. I-Notes charges $32 a semester and $3 to $3.50 for daily notes.

Rob Jones has been in the business of note taking for seven years and currently owns I-Notes. He said Versity.com, with its short list of offered classes and unreliability, is "no competition at all."

Compared to I-Notes which seeks note takers with at least a 3.2 GPA who are registered in the class for which they take notes, Versity.com does not have an office at the University.

Also, when businesses hire students in the field, and not in the class, notes might be inaccurate because note takers are working for money, and not for complete notes.

While there are classes listed for seven major universities throughout the United States, notes are not yet available for every class listed. For some classes, Versity.com still needs note takers.

Notes-n-Quotes offers the highest pay for its note takers -- $13 for every one-hour lecture and $15 for a class lasting more than one hour.

Versity.com offers $8 to note takers for every lecture regardless of length. I-Notes pays $6.50 to $8 depending on the popularity of the class.

Notes-n-Quotes and Versity.com offer notes for about the same number of classes -- 24 and 18 classes respectively -- but I-Notes offers the largest selection with notes for about 100 classes each semester.