The erosion of the college 'bookstore'

The Harvard /MIT Coop's (aka Harvard Cooperative Society) main store on Harvard Square was built in 1924 and designed by Perry, Shaw & Hepburn in the Colonial Revival style.

—Photo by Beyond My Ken

From Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com

It’s sad to see how college bookstores, once major and charming attractions in New England’s many college towns, are being ruined by the chains that have bought them. There are fewer and fewer books as they’re replaced by the likes of logoed sweatshirts, tacky tchotchkes and other junk.

The Brown “Bookstore’’ is particularly depressing. If you want to go to a real bookstore in Providence, I recommend Symposium Books, downtown, or Books on the Square and Paper Nautilus, on Wayland Square.

I guess that the Internet, by taking away the monopoly on textbook sales, helped drive a stake through the old college-bookstore business model. Even the once grand Harvard/MIT Coop bookstore is a skeleton of its former self.

Reading on a screen is not the same as reading on paper, which is easier on the eyes and better supports comprehension and memory of the material. I thought of this the other day in the Route 128 Amtrak/MBTA station, where there’s  no longer a newsstand. For that matter, other than one helpful and lonely Amtrak clerk there are no longer any service people to buy tickets or  coffee from, or ask a train-schedule question. Heading to the paperless and, for some, serviceless society.

Emerson College occupies this row of buildings across from the corner of Boston Common

— Photo by John Phelan

Even in the pouring rain in downtown Boston last Tuesday, it was fun to see a dozen Emerson College film students shooting scenes on the sidewalk across from the Common. Most appeared to be of East Asian ancestry and half of them had haired dyed green, purple or blue.