While UK universities are gradually reopening after the latest Covid-enforced shutdown, one fixture will not return to many: the handy campus bookstore.

This month, the famous Economists¡¯ Bookshop, which opened in the London School of Economics¡¯ Strand campus in 1947,??it was closing permanently after 74 years of service.

It is the latest campus bookseller to confirm it?would not reopen when coronavirus restrictions are lifted, following Blackwell¡¯s? last year to permanently shutter five university outlets in St Andrews, Belfast, Bradford, Keele and Leeds. Waterstones¡¯ university branches in are also gone for good, with campus branches in Nottingham and Leicester falling foul of the Amazon-dominated book market prior to the pandemic.

So, does the university campus bookstore have a future? Paul Kelly, professor of political philosophy at the LSE, was optimistic. ¡°The business model whereby the bookstore is a large pile of textbooks and university-branded hoodies is dead, but an intelligent space to show and discuss ideas and drink coffee is a place academics and students will spend money,¡± said Professor Kelly, who said he typically spent about ?3,000 a year in the Economists¡¯ Bookshop.

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Martin Paul Eve, professor of literature, technology and publishing at Birkbeck, University of London, was less certain, noting that ¡°nearly all of my reading, in this day and age, is digital¡±.

¡°The role of the bookshop space is contested. Do we need it any more? What is its purpose?¡± asked Professor Eve.

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However, Craig Dadds, manager of the university-owned bookshop at Canterbury Christ Church University, insisted that ¡°campus bookshops still matter¡± and ¡°bring something unique to the learning environment¡±.

¡°An academic bookshop is more than the sum of its price-matched textbooks, book bundles and next-day book orders, and it is more than the local book festivals, conferences, book signings and public lectures it supports,¡± said Mr Dadds, who argued that it was a ¡°clear statement, smack-bang in the middle of campus, of the academic excellence and the cultural values a university aspires to¡±.

With the bookshop part of learning and library resources at the university, Mr Dadds said Canterbury could ¡°give students a range of options from physical to e-book, whether for purchase or to borrow¡±.

¡°The last 10 years have not been easy ¨C we¡¯ve gone from six to three booksellers and lost two-thirds of our floor space, while the pandemic saw footfall disappear from campus,¡± he admitted, saying his store had successfully run home deliveries during lockdown.

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¡°There is a lot to do, but I believe that during the pandemic, the role of the campus bookshop has become more important, not less.¡±

jack.grove@timeshighereducation.com