By Angela White
Trinity Times Correspondent
When Trinity Washington University sophomore Amber Wright went to buy textbooks for her classes this fall, she didn’t head to the campus bookstore, because there is no longer a brick-and-mortar shop on the college grounds.
Wright was directed to a virtual reality to find her coursework reading material. That is, the newly launched Trinity online bookstore.
Trinity President Patricia McGuire announced in the spring of 2022 that the university was moving to a fully online bookstore after talks with Barnes & Noble regarding a physical bookstore on campus didn’t pan out.
So, the Main Hall bookstore shut down during the summer of 2022, ringing in the new era in the virtual internet shopping world, in partnership with MBS Direct, an affiliate of Barnes & Noble.
Brick-and-mortar bookstores have been disappearing throughout the U.S. since 2010 as e-commerce has grown in popularity, along with an accelerated shift to e-books, and the COVID-19 pandemic only accelerated that trend, according to a 2021 study in the Michigan Journal of Economics.
That trend is now making its way onto university campuses.
Wright told the Trinity Times she has not used the new online Trinity bookstore and is unfamiliar with the new platform, because she typically buys any reading materials not provided by her professors online from Amazon, making that e-commerce marketplace the most user-friendly option for her.
Trinity junior Darron Johnson said he really misses the physical campus bookstore, partially for nostalgia and for the convenience it offered whenever he was in a rush to head to class and needed to pick up last-minute items.
“I am usually headed to campus after work with very little time to spare,” Johnson said. “The bookstore allowed me to buy my books in person. I am more of a hands-on guy. I would grab paper and pens if I left mine in the car or at home, buy snacks before racing to class or check out some new Trinity swag. It was coinvent and also nice to be able to browse items in person.”
Trinity administration officials said the decision was made to switch to online shopping after reviewing the data on national trends of virtual bookstores.
That data showed university officials the benefits a virtual bookstore could provide students, essentially making it easier to buy their textbooks, said Carlota Ocampo, Trinity’s provost and vice president of Academic Affairs.
“It cuts out the middle person allowing books to be shipped directly to students,” Ocampo said, “making it a more efficient and climate friendly process.”
Other than the physical presence, the online store meets the needs of most students.
For instance, the online bookstore accepts book vouchers, just like the physical store did.
The new process of buying books online permits students to enter their student identification number and have their class schedule electronically select all textbooks assigned to their courses.
The new online system also allows students to view multiple price options. Trinity’s new online bookstore can be found at https://bncvirtual.com/trinitydc.