Foreign Perspectives

I still remember the day over 30 years back when I first went into the Bookshop at Queen’s with my Dad and we came out with a pile of books for my courses that we could barely carry between us.

Back in those days it was the only proper bookshop in Belfast and it carried books on every subject that you could imagine. Not just on the topics taught at Queen’s either as it had a range of normal books that was far wider than you’d have seen in any other bookshop around at the time. So, over the years I called in now and again despite the difficulties in parking nearby and I don’t think I ever left without purchasing something that I’d been looking for nor without buying something that I hadn’t been looking for but saw by chance.

It was always the kind of bookshop that browsing around meant that you came across something of interest. That’s something that you don’t get online as you tend to be shepherded into books similar to those you’ve already bought – with the Bookshop at Queen’s you could come across something totally different to anything you’d bought before yet totally fascinating despite that. Thus, for example, I have the brilliant little book Learning the Law which, despite it being a subject that I’ll probably never learn, is quite fascinating and there are many equally engrossing books in my bookcase just like that.

But today I made what will almost certainly be my last couple of purchases as the bookshop will be closing its doors permanently on Saturday. Sadly, they’d already packed up the masses of academic books and it was a couple of typically diverse purchases that I ended up choosing: The Celts and Collins Easy Learning Greek. Would I ever have bought them on Amazon? Well, no, because they’d a) not have turned up on any searches that I’d have been likely to use and b) as they’re outside my normal reading, they’d not have turned up on my suggestions either.

What finished it off seemed to be a combination of factors. That difficulty in parking is a lot worse now than it was 30 years ago for a start and with a major chain bookshop beside the city carparks I’d say that the casual browser largely relocated. Internet purchases are rife these days, of course, but thanks to the demise of the Net Book Agreement there’s also extensive discount which is probably more of an issue. Strangely, the prices of books or, rather, of academic books are much the same now as they were 30 years back which is in itself something of a problem as the mark-up percentage means that they’re less profitable than they used to be. The availability of lecture notes online is probably not a major factor as even 30 years back the lecturers handed out copies of notes for many courses for what was the relatively small fee of £5 or so. What could be a big issue is that students just don’t have as much free cash as they did 30 years ago: not only did we not have student fees back then but we received a grant of around £1000 or so each year (more if you lived in a flat) thus buying books means borrowing from the Bank of Mum & Dad.

It’s sad to see the bookshop go but I do hope that when times are better that it will be possible for it to rise again.