Bodies, boxes and, most importantly, books are on the move. Like many other offices on campus, the UMass Bookstore is moving to its new location in the Campus Center, where it will be found on the upper level.
The bookstore in the Quinn Administration building has been closed since March 24 and will re-open March 31, the day of the grand opening of the Campus Center. The bookstore’s re-opening is of many ceremonies and activities scheduled to mark the official opening of the building.
The moving is “a lot of work, there’s a lot of coordinating …and organizing that needs to be done,” confessed bookstore manager Mitch Walker. He added “it has been a fairly time-consuming project, especially for the last couple of weeks. We have to prepare to box and move, and return some of our books back to publishers and keep the ones we need for the following semester.”
The bookstore returns unsold books six weeks after the semester begins, and is about to place orders for the summer session.
Impatience is the only feeling that will arise in anyone who wants to see what the new bookstore will look like, as the location is off-limits while a construction crew of fourteen puts on the finishing touches and installs the new furniture. Walker says that he has walked through the new area and says it’s “about twice the size [of the old location]. It’s going to be a nice big space.”
The store will now have a much larger textbooks department, about twice the size of the old one, and the textbooks will be organized the same way. Walker says the new bookstore will “create a brand new environment for everybody here on campus.”
The move is not just a change in location, it will allow the creation of more jobs. There will now be sixteen cashiers during book rush, compared to the twelve there were before, and six year-round cashers instead of four.
Employees will also have better work stations and they will be more accessible to make customers’ shopping easier. “Collectively, [everybody] is extremely excited to move to the new location,” said Walker.
If anyone needs to buy a book before the bookstore re-opens Walker suggests using efollet.com to place an order. With the “prepaid special order service,” offered all year, books are shipped directly to the customer’s house. E-follet is a corporate partner of the UMass bookstore. To all customers, Mitch Walker advises “Get out of the line! Shop online.”