Plenty of residents use the Woodlawn Avenue location as a community spot to study and attend events like book readings, Annavarapu said. But she said there don’t seem to be many changes from when she was a regular. Sneha Annavarapu, a U of C anthropology student, was a member of the co-op.Īnnavarapu has been away from campus for the past year, so she hasn’t really kept tabs on the transition to a nonprofit. “But grown to such a point that it doesn’t seem really necessary to have a co-op when you could have a nonprofit.” The co-op model “made sense when the people buying the books were the people that were making the decisions,” Wolter said. Wolter uses the Seminary for his divinity studies, as it has an “extensive” selection of academic books - “more than any other bookstore I’ve ever seen in the U.S., for sure.” The Atlanta native has attended the bookstore since before he started at U of C, as he stopped by during one of his initial visits to the campus. Nonprofit status is “a more honest way of approaching the structure” that “allows us to shift the conversation locally and nationally about what a bookstore could and should be,” Deutsch said.ĭerek Wolter, a first-year master’s student at the University of Chicago, was visiting the academic bookstore on Woodlawn Tuesday. The co-op hasn’t paid out dividends to shareholders for the last quarter-century, so it didn’t exactly live up to its name. The stores provide “moments of calm and moments of quiet that we are sorely lacking in this day and age.” “The work of cultural book-selling is about creating browsing experiences - experiences that lead to discovery, insight and reflection,” Deutsch said. That includes community engagement, the neighborhood’s sense of ownership and the store’s commitment to improving in-store experiences. “Everything that is good about the co-op model will continue,” Deutsch said.
Donors are welcomed, but those who can only focus on 501(c)(3) organizations won’t be able to support the stores. The switch is “unrelated to tax exemptions” and wasn’t made to attract potential donors, Deutsch said. It has operated as a co-operative in Hyde Park since 1961. 57th St., which has a wider selection of novels and fiction. Woodlawn Ave., which focuses on academic texts and 57th Street Books, 1301 E. The Seminary Co-Op oversees the Seminary Co-Op Bookstore, 5751 S.
HYDE PARK - Ignore the name: The Seminary Co-Op bookstores are now nonprofits to better reflect their “cultural value” to the city, director Jeff Deutsch announced.
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