University bookshop closes
A sheet of A4 is roughly taped to the doors of the long-established glass-walled shop, down the road from the Shadows bar and opposite the university library on Alfred St. It is headlined, 'University Bookshop Limited (in Liquidation).' It states that Meltzer Mason were appointed liquidators on July 2, and the abruptness of the liquidation is signalled in the line, 'Returns will no longer be accepted, and gift certificates and store credits will not be redeemable.' Meltzer Mason also declare, 'The bookshop will remain open while a buyer for the business is sought.'
ReadingRoom learned of the closure on Saturday. Calls were made the following day. 'Horrifying and depressing,' responded associate professor Paula Morris. 'That's my main reaction. Horrifying and depressing.'
It came as news to Grant Duncan, teaching fellow in politics and international relations. 'My first reaction is that's really sad.' His next reactions were to coolly assess it in the wider context of online learning. 'It raises a lot of questions. I've been teaching a university course this semester, and really, do we need textbooks anymore in the physical sense? I've increasingly found that teaching at a university means that books are becoming expensive and unnecessary for a student.'
It was a damning assessment but only partially accurate. Pene Whitty is uniquely placed to comment, as manager of University Bookshop (UBS) at Canterbury University and as chair of the Booksellers Association. 'There's always going to be a market for physical textbooks,' she said. 'But it's going to be a smaller market. The model for university bookstores has changed. Textbook sales are definitely declining. After the earthquakes in Christchurch, a lot of textbooks went online when the university gave students free online access. So we looked at our business model and knew that we had to be prepared for physical textbooks to disappear.' UBS reduced its footprint by 50 per cent, laid off staff, and increased its general book stocks. 'We've managed to maintain it that way. You have to be aware in our business that the textbook market may be shrinking a little bit and then it will sort of stabilise and you need to pick it up with offerings like stationery and general books.'
But Ubiq already features such 'offerings'. It's a big space. A peep through the windows on Sunday revealed entertaining trash such as Stephen King and manga comics at the back, stationery in the middle, and the new Ardern and the new Chidgey out front next to titles on Gaza. 'It's not just a place you go to buy textbooks,' as Paula Morris said. 'It's a proper bookshop and it's really been a great supporter of contemporary New Zealand literature.'
The problem, according to Grant Duncan, is that technology has moved too fast. 'The closure of Ubiq is simply a symptom of the greater crisis of universities in the AI revolution,' he said. 'It's a symptom of yesterday's technology catching up with us. We haven't even thought about tomorrow's. Haven't even thought about it. I mean one sort of dystopian view of the future of the university is that AI writes students essays and then AI grades them. And so the student becomes kind of just a fee-paying cipher in the middle between two AI systems. As long as they keep paying the fees, then they get their degree. Okay so this is a dystopian exaggerated future, but getting back to the closure of Ubiq, it's just a sad indictment–no, not an indictment; it's just a sad reality of where education and learning and reading are going, and what's happening to our universities actually.'
Paula Morris was in no mood to entertain dystopian visions of a university campus without a university bookstore. 'We're the biggest university in New Zealand obviously by far,' she said. 'It's essential to have a bookshop…I'm hopeful that something can be worked out. Surely a bookshop can be sustained by the tens of thousands of people who are on campus every day.'
Pene Whitty said, 'We're really upset to lose a bookstore like that of long standing. But I think there will still be a place for it. I think someone will come in and there will be a university bookshop there. It just may have to pivot, and have different offerings. But there is always going to be a market for university bookstores.'
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