Inside the Newsletter Welcome and Goodbye by Frank Kramer Flying the Fiction Flag by Chuck Pacheco Oh, the Places You'll Go by Carole Horne June Featured 50 Being in the business of providing books to students puts us in the position of continually welcoming incoming and returning first years, upperclassmen, and graduate students, and saying good bye to graduating seniors. At Harvard Book Store we’ve been doing it for 67 years. Lately, in the midst of the current competitive and technological turmoil in our industry, we’ve been wondering how much longer we will be able to continue doing this. So it was particularly heartwarming to receive a note from a graduating senior that included the following lines: "I can honestly say that what I will miss most after graduation is the Harvard Book Store. For the last four years, your bookstore has served as a safe haven from the uncaring world of academia at the University. You truly have succeeded in creating an intellectual environment committed to the fostering of the exchange of ideas and the creation of relationships — between the employees and the customers, the employees and the books, and the customers and the books." Now that’s a fortifying message. It hits us where we live. The young man who wrote this has articulated our small bookstore’s purpose better than we could do it ourselves. The writer goes on to say "I hope that when I come back for my 10th, 25th and 50th reunion, the Harvard Book Store will still be at the corner of Mass. Ave and Plympton." We would love to be able to say "No problem. We’ll be here whenever you return." In fact, as we attempt to plan our future we know that if we are going to survive not only must we maintain and renew what we do well in our store but also we must find ways to extend our strengths to those who want to maintain the relationship from their homes as they continue to grow and move from one place to another. We think we’re on the right track with our web site harvardsquarebookstore.com. Like all the others it provides a huge database of books including and beyond the titles on our shelves (every one of which we would love to send to you or your loved ones anywhere on the planet.) More relevant to HBS customers though, we have unique features and some original content, like recordings from our Friday Forum and other speaker series, the Featured Scholar pages (this month focusing upon Hilary Putnam), our special celebration of the 30th anniversary of Harvard’s Afro-American Studies Department, our exclusive link to a weekly feature article from The Chronicle of Higher Education, and our unique bookseller recommendations and HBS weekly bestsellers. Like anything else on the web, it can never replace the sensory and emotional experience of entering the literary world of a fine bookstore. However, we do hope that combined with the memory of the real thing, it can sustain you through those long droughts between return visits to our store.  Frank Kramer is owner of Harvard Book Store.

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