Barnes and Noble takes over bookstore management

Barnes and Noble takes over bookstore management

BY LINDSEY FIELDER
Rice News staff

The Rice campus bookstore received a facelift this summer. The management of the bookstore has been turned over to Barnes and Noble College Booksellers.

Not only has the new management changed the look and feel of the bookstore, but they have streamlined the way books will be made available to the Rice community. The average bookstore patron should see improvements in service with little inconvenience.

“I think we’ll find that Barnes and Noble can handle our bookstore more efficiently and better than we did,” said Neill Binford, associate vice president for administration. “They have purchasing power, the ability to get books more quickly and the staff for rush periods, including the beginning of the school year. We’re going to get better service and better merchandising — the whole store will look and feel better.”

Binford said the bookstore has been under review for almost 15 years. The retirement of the bookstore manager and the planning for the Collaborative Research Center at the corner of Main Street and University Boulevard both spurred the university to look at a different way to run the store.

“Right now, the Collaborative Research Center is slated to have retail space at the street level and we’re planning an academic superstore over there that will be the Rice campus bookstore,” he said. “We asked Barnes and Noble to make a proposal as to how they would go about setting up a large bookstore like this.”

Barnes and Noble not only made a proposal for the new bookstore, but the company also recommended Rice turn over management of the bookstore for the duration of the store’s time in its current location — to make a smoother transition when the new location becomes available.

“What Barnes and Noble can do with a superstore made them the right choice,” Binford said. “They manage more than 400 bookstores, including [the stores at] Yale, Penn and Georgia Tech. That is the kind of store we hope to build in the future. An academic superstore will give Rice a bookstore of appropriate quality and character.”

Evelyn Morton was appointed by Barnes and Noble to be the new store manager at Rice. “She was a manager at the University of Houston (UH) bookstore and was the obvious choice for the store manager position at Rice,” he said.
Barnes and Noble manages the bookstores at other Texas institutions, including UH, Houston Community College, Texas A&M University and Texas Tech University.