Bookstore Advisory Committee Meeting Notes, Feb 25, 2009

BOOKSTORE ADVISORY COMMITTEE MEETING NOTES
February 25, 3pm
Attended by: Linda Cornutt, Jeff Keever, Anh Tran, Patti Thompson, Kim Lawler, David Totten, Carl Waluconis, Lawrence Morales, Helen Wu, Anh Ngoc Dao Hoang, Michael Cheng

Introductions
Patti Thompson, Bookstore Manager, briefly discussed the minutes from the last meeting from December.

Patti then discussed the results of the December 2008 buyback period. The Bookstore gave out $61,000 to students during this most recent buyback period, as compared to $53,000 during the same buyback in December 2007, which represents a 15% increase year over year. Patti and Anh both wondered if the email that David Totten, a Student Representative to the Advisory Committee, had sent out to students had had a positive effect on the buyback.

Patti announced the upcoming workshop for all District Faculty, sponsored by the District Faculty Development Coordinator Office, entitled, “What WE Can Do to Reduce the Cost of Textbooks to Students”, to be held March 4. Lori Schmidt, Director of Stores for Barnes and Noble, will be coming to this campus that day to facilitate this workshop, and advise faculty on what they can do to help students save money on books.

Anh and Patti discussed the upcoming change in procedure for ordering books. Beginning in Summer, 2009, faculty book orders will be initiated by faculty using the Liquid Office system. The reason for this change is to streamline the book ordering process, to make it more efficient, requiring less “paper and mail” handling, and also to decrease the chances of a book order being lost in a shuffle of paperwork. Judy Blair will conduct training sessions for both staff who actually place the orders with the Bookstore, as well as the faculty who will be initiating the orders. Lawrence and Kim had many questions surrounding this issue, such as the issue of having to input all the information each quarter for a textbook which will be used throughout the academic year; also, will the Liquid Office form the staff use have a “form fill” feature, so that ISBNs for such recurring book titles will automatically be generated. Patti and Anh both agreed to look into this issue.

Jeff announced the start up of the “Bookstore Blog”, a place where these meeting notes will be posted, as well as any other important information that faculty and students may need to be aware of. There is a link to this blog from the Bookstore main web page. It was suggested that the dates for buyback for students be posted on this blog.

The question was asked: what would draw students to the Bookstore? Students responded: stationeries, book signings, more public events, collaboration with the CAB, for example at the Unity Fair.