Sarah Rainey has made $4 by taking notes.

Rainey, a senior from Snohomish, Wash., uses The Campus Notebook to share her notes with other WKU students.

The Campus Notebook is a website designed for college students that allows them to upload and share class notes with other students.

Rainey started uploading her notes onto the website when she started receiving emails from The Campus Notebook, she said.

She said that the process of uploading notes is easy.

“I already have all of my notes digital anyway, because I take notes on my laptop,” Rainey said. “All I have to do is save them onto my desktop, upload them just like you would for any other file attachment in an email.”

Students whose notes are downloaded from the website get paid in Book Cents, Rainey said. She earned Book Cents when other students downloaded her notes, but students can earn them other ways, too.

According to The Campus Notebook website, students can receive Book Cents by doing things such as rating professors and referring friends to the website.

A student has to earn 2,500 Book Cents, which is equal to $100, before they can cash them in for money.

Rainey said that she doesn’t feel that her professors would have any issues with her uploading her notes onto the website.

She said that she shared her notes with students who needed them before she used The Campus Notebook.

Rainey now uses The Campus Notebook site as a place to redirect students who need notes.

“Telling them to go to a website is much easier than me having to personally email everyone every time,” she said.

Lantre Barr, director of operations and cofounder of The Campus Notebook, said in a phone interview that the founders made the site with students who miss a lot of class in mind.

Barr said that he was a student athlete in college and had to miss a lot of classes.

He wasn’t friends with anyone in his classes other than his teammates, so borrowing notes from classmates was difficult.

Rainey, who misses class because of her involvement with the Forensics team, said The Campus Notebook is helpful for students in campus organizations.

“I believe in the mission of The Campus Notebook,” she said. “I don’t always trust the people who are in my class, but sometimes the people who are motivated enough to put their notes online tend to take good notes anyway.”

Barr said uploading and downloading notes is simple, and the site also has professor evaluations as well as a section specifically for professors.

“Professors can see what is going on the website so they can see that the students are only uploading notes,” he said.

Professors can also track the notes uploaded by their students, answer students’ questions and upload documents, according to The Campus Notebook’s website.

Barr said that the founders considered ethics when creating the site.

“We try to abide by every university’s code of ethics,” he said. “We try to focus on providing for students who don’t take the greatest notes.”

The site has previously removed notes at the requests of professors, Barr said.

“We’ve had a couple professors who said that they didn’t want their notes on the site, so we took them down and respected their wishes,” he said.

Sami Almudaris, a graduate student in geography, said that The Campus Notebook could impact students positively if used correctly.

“It comes down to the student who is using those notes,” he said. “They shouldn’t just rely on those notes solely and not read their textbooks or take their own notes.”

Students should also be aware that some professors vary their lectures from semester to semester, so the notes aren’t always the same, Almudaris said.

Roger Scott, professor of physics and astronomy, teaches Astronomy 104, one of the courses that has notes uploaded onto The Campus Notebook.

Scott said that he doesn’t see a problem with his students uploading notes from his classes.

He said he understands that some students can’t make it to class due to weather or illness.

“I can see where it could help students who couldn’t make it to class,” he said.

Scott said he didn’t know about The Campus Notebook but plans to look into it and is considering using the section of the website for professors.