After a week-long closure, the University Store officially reopened yesterday in partnership with Barnes & Noble College on the Statesboro and Armstrong campus. 

What’s New?

While the outside of the campus store hasn’t changed, Barnes & Noble has made changes to the layout.

Including: 

• more spacious walkways
• organized convenience shelves 
• school supplies are more visible 

“The layout I feel is a lot more streamlined. I would say it feels a lot less cluttered, but there’s also more space,” said Daniel Curry, a student at Georgia Southern. “Obviously, I do appreciate the back wall actually being utilized for stuff people will use, as opposed to random merch no one ever buys.”

Barnes & Noble will be getting rid of the “scantron cup,” where students can leave a quarter and skip the line, according to staff. 

There is new merchandise available including clothes, keychains, and cups, however, Barnes & Noble will no longer be taking Eagle Express, staff said. 

Books

In a recent announcement from Auxiliary Services, Georgia Southern has encouraged professors to submit their textbooks and course material lists to the Course Material Adoptions Tool, accessible from MyGeorgiaSouthern. 

“The partnership aims to enhance access to affordable course materials, offering a wide selection of new, used, rental, and digital formats,” per Auxiliary Services. 

Student Reactions

“I expect them to be a lot more stocked,” Curry said. “I’m a music student, so a lot of times they’ll order 3 for a class of 30, and then it’s just a fight to the death of whoever gets it first. Then everyone else has to just suffer or wait two weeks to get a book. It’d be nice to actually have everything stocked to the class level, or at least have it some kind of backstock.” 

“I don’t know how it will go, like professors need to order extra books for classes, because when it was within the university communication was pretty simple. So I’m not really sure how it’s going to work out,” says Lindsay Doyle, a student.

According to Doyle, the store is a lot more organized and she first noticed the rearrangement of shelves. 

Staff Updates

Barnes & Noble is looking for a “seamless” transition. According to an anonymous University Store employee, each student worker was offered a meeting to discuss their transition, and each student worker interested was internally hired. 

Barnes & Noble is still setting up the textbook process and also plans to have a section of regular books, according to staff.