On Tuesday July 19th, I met with Debbie Harvie, Managing Director of Community Services and Rebecca Irani, Communications Manager to discuss the UBC Bookstore name being changed to UBC Central.
First, I really appreciated Debbie and Rebecca taking the time to come and meet with me in person. I know that they have received many, many emails in response to this issue and this was an important gesture. They have also read the petition.
In short, Debbie informed me that the bookstore is moving forward, evolving, and changing to incorporate the growing eBook side of the book trade and to expand the services that are already housed in the bookstore. They stand behind the name, especially as they feel this is a trend that we will start to see happening across North America. They still feel that UBC Central is a better name as it represents a significant, central place on campus, a hub of student and faculty activity. There seemed to be some resistance to the fact that many us opposed to the new name believe that UBC Bookstore represents the same thing. We went back and forth with this for quite sometime. While they understand the reasoning behind the desire to keep the name, they maintain the need to change the name.
I made it clear that the only outcome that would satisfy me and my fellow petition signers is to keep the name or at, the very least, have something that signifies books. I also said that we do require a public response to these protests. We are no longer interested in receiving emails to help us “clarify their decision” - we want to know how the petition and our protests will be considered.
Their only concession so far is that the planned timing of the new name (August 1st) will be postponed in order to consider all of this. Yesterday I followed up with Debbie and Rebecca and asked them to make this public to the UBC community. They have since responded to say that they are planning an in-store public forum about the name and have suggested a compromise that keeps Central and Bookstore in the name.
A couple of important issues came up in the meeting. Many of us are concerned that the removal of “bookstore” from the name implies a moving away from selling books altogether and that this is perhaps the first step towards having as few books as possible in the store. The bookstore’s significant changes to their website and online ordering system - for course books and for trade books - and their new system for ordering, reserving or renting text books for students are all great improvements. But, it seems to me that the inevitable result of an overhaul of online sales would mean fewer books actually in the store. While Debbie claims to be committed to books and especially selling general books and trade books, suggesting that there will never come a day that these are not sold in the store, their other changes and new approach to the business seem to point towards this becoming an inevitability. The change in name is just the beginning.
We did have an interesting discussion about what the bookstore should and could be for faculty and students on campus and Debbie commented that many of us who signed the petition are obviously passionate about books. However, this is not reflected in the bookstore sales and many people prefer to buy books online through Amazon or others where deep discounts are offered. Independent bookstores including UBC can’t compete with chain store discounts or Amazon. Debbie claims that she would love to make the bookstore - especially the non-course books - a better bookstore. She wants input from us as to what we would like to see in the store, what types of books they should be selling. Debbie also mentioned that she is regularly in touch with heads of units about book lists etc. to see how they can improve stock in certain subject areas.
For me personally, part of this renaming issue is directly tied to the fear of losing a place to buy books, whatever it may be called. UBC has become my local bookstore as all others are slowly disappearing. I don’t support chain stores and have never bought books on Amazon and so a place to buy, browse, and order books is vital for me, not just for the academic community but for Vancouver in general. This is perhaps a dilemma for some - we want a bookstore on campus and want it to be a place that has a good selection of titles. But many of us can’t afford the publishers’ prices and choose the online options or prefer the convenience of ordering online. Improving the bookstore relies on us to support it through buying books but giving this kind of support relies on the bookstore being better!!!
So, perhaps we should hold Debbie to her claim that she would love to improve the bookstore. Let’s begin by telling her what we would like to see. Ask her to circulate the subject lists to departments (and make sure our unit/department heads send it to us, encourage this relationship and dialogue) and make suggestions for improving their stock. Debbie was worried that if the name changed, faculty would boycott the store and not order books from there - but this defeats the purpose of what we are trying to do here. We almost need a reverse boycott, a “buy a book” day. At the very least, we need to show that our support goes beyond the name and what it signifies, we need to show that we want a bookstore on campus because it sells books.
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