Is the age of the campus bookshop over?

While UK universities are gradually reopening after the latest Covid-enforced shutdown, one fixture will not return to many: the handy campus bookstore.

This month, the famous Economists’ Bookshop, which opened in the London School of Economics’ Strand campus in 1947, announced it was closing permanently after 74 years of service.

It is the latest campus bookseller to confirm it would not reopen when coronavirus restrictions are lifted, following Blackwell’s decision last year to permanently shutter five university outlets in St Andrews, Belfast, Bradford, Keele and Leeds. Waterstones’ university branches in Hull and Essex are also gone for good, with campus branches in Nottingham and Leicester falling foul of the Amazon-dominated book market prior to the pandemic.

So, does the university campus bookstore have a future? Paul Kelly, professor of political philosophy at the LSE, was optimistic. “The business model whereby the bookstore is a large pile of textbooks and university-branded hoodies is dead, but an intelligent space to show and discuss ideas and drink coffee is a place academics and students will spend money,” said Professor Kelly, who said he typically spent about £3,000 a year in the Economists’ Bookshop.

Martin Paul Eve, professor of literature, technology and publishing at Birkbeck, University of London, was less certain, noting that “nearly all of my reading, in this day and age, is digital”.

“The role of the bookshop space is contested. Do we need it any more? What is its purpose?” asked Professor Eve.

However, Craig Dadds, manager of the university-owned bookshop at Canterbury Christ Church University, insisted that “campus bookshops still matter” and “bring something unique to the learning environment”.

“An academic bookshop is more than the sum of its price-matched textbooks, book bundles and next-day book orders, and it is more than the local book festivals, conferences, book signings and public lectures it supports,” said Mr Dadds, who argued that it was a “clear statement, smack-bang in the middle of campus, of the academic excellence and the cultural values a university aspires to”.

With the bookshop part of learning and library resources at the university, Mr Dadds said Canterbury could “give students a range of options from physical to e-book, whether for purchase or to borrow”.

“The last 10 years have not been easy – we’ve gone from six to three booksellers and lost two-thirds of our floor space, while the pandemic saw footfall disappear from campus,” he admitted, saying his store had successfully run home deliveries during lockdown.

“There is a lot to do, but I believe that during the pandemic, the role of the campus bookshop has become more important, not less.”

jack.grove@timeshighereducation.com