State of the College Bookstore - Part 1: The Problem

I never knew until I started this job, just how much turmoil is in the College Bookstore industry.

Lets look at the industries' name; "College Bookstore".  There are your first two problems right there.  Books are already facing deep hurdles as a books are being replaced by online sources.  Publishers, in order to keep up with the times, have moved to digital content.  Thus Bookstores, the Brick and Mortar bookstores, are not only fighting to stay relevant in the digital age, but also having to compete with online retailers such as Amazon, Barns & Noble, and increasingly, Google Play and Apple iTunes.

But our biggest competition, as I have said in the past, is in students back pockets.  Students can quickly whip our a smart phone and determine what the best prices for books and supplies are.  Its not just the bookstore down the road, but the online retailers such as Half, and the dozen other retailers I mentioned previously.

Then you have the College part of it.  This brings two big problems.  First the rising cost of tuitions are sending students to look for the cheapest method to get books.  Even I have done this.  I won't admit guilt here.  After all, I have to make ends meet as well.

Then you have the other aspect of College, bureaucracy, and by extension, politics.  Admins often think they know how to run a business.  Of course they know how to run a public institution, but there is a very big difference between a retail business and an institution.  Presidents have to balance the wants of influential members of the community, Alumni, Regents, Elected Politicians, Faculty, Staff, Students, Athletic Departments, etc, are properly satisfied with the University as a whole.  Thus all departments must fall in line to help out when called.  This call is especially important when you are one of the few front facing departments.  Along with Athletics, Alumni Associations, Marketing departments, Executive departments, and yes, College Bookstores, are among those front facing  departments.

The next problem facing the industry is a perception problem.  Perception problem.  Just was roll does the college bookstore play in the College and in the community?  Are we here to support Students?  Faculty?  Staff?  Alumni?  Athletics?  Is our scope limited to a few, or do we need to appeal to the masses?  Are we just a bookstore?  can we afford to be just a bookstore anymore?  How can we stay relevant to the needs of the students?

Last major problem is a problem from the back end.  Most bookstores are just now catching up to the times.  In many ways, we are still behind.  While Major retailers have had money to throw at these problems, most bookstore have to fight the above mentioned bureaucracy to get these problems fixed.  Other problems involve sourcing options that don't have our best interests at heart, or at the very least don't want to be bothered by the small retailers.

All of this come at a time when privatization becomes the key to "fixing" the problems they have.

But I don't want to focus solely on the Problems.  I also want to use this series to address some possible fixes.  Some of these might be idealistic.  And I may not have all of the answers.  But I do believe there is a way to survive in this time of evolution.

What a shitty time to be in IT...

On Tuesday, computer technicians around the world drank a toast to Microsoft Windows XP.  Most of this is due to the intense headache of getting people off the OS rather than any sort of sadness or contempt.

Don't get me wrong.  XP was a fine OS.  But the OS came out in Fall of 2001.  In 2001, George Bush was president, most of the country was wrapped around the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, I graduated from High School that spring and was working on getting a certification in System Administration where we were learning to use Windows 2000.  It was in that class that I caught my first glimpse of XP.  First Impression; Looked like something a kid drew.

And now, almost 15 years later, Microsoft has finally had enough.  The problem is too many people are stubborn fools when it comes to technology.  The old adage of "If it ain't broke, why fix it," was literally what one person quoted in an interview on the news.  They wan't it to work and to stay working.  It didn't matter if Microsoft raised the specter of the unknown security hole that would go unpatched and would create the worst security crisis since Y2K.  (Hold that thought for a second) They weren't going to change.

But times change.  And now we are having to get people to update their ancient systems.

This is a lot easier for me right now.  I was able to get just about everyone in the store off of XP and onto Windows 7.  Most of these devices just needed to be replaced.  And with the exception of a few laptops, the solution is fixed.

I can't say the same for our PoS Systems.  No instructions came down the pipes from our vendors until I decided to work on upgrading and was told "oh no! you have to have an appointment with our sales support team before you can do that!  and they are all swamped now."  I don't feel sorry for them.  They brought it on themselves for creating a system that requires support to do everything from getting a new computer to kicking a printer back online.  

Then I get to work with Compatibility issues.  The easy part, relatively, is trying to get the registers to talk via. NetBeui, since that is apparently far better then TCP/IP.  This was easily solved by setting everything to talk vis TCP/IP and figuring out why the servers wouldn't take a static IP without loosing network connection.  (Gateway was set.  My bad)

But thanks to this, a disc cloner, spare RAM and a van that get about 20 miles to the gallon, I can probably get this all finished by Monday.  (with about a week of PCI incompliance of course.)

IT is having a far rougher time.  some 200+ computers have been kicked off the network (including about 8 of our laptops which are going bye bye soon anyway).  A lot of these people received plenty of warning about this, and was even offered updated computers for free.  (how can you not turn down a free computer upgrade?)  So now their computer is not working, and they are mad as hell.  Who do they take it out on, Helpdesk.  I feel sorry for my friends in there right now.  

So the rush is on to replace these computers that are now offline that they should have done long ago.

But the Windows XP crisis isn;t the biggest issue right now.  Rather the biggest issue is a security hole that went unnoticed for 2 years.  This bug, called Heartbleed affecting practically every system that uses OpenSSL...and thats practically everyone.  Fortunately companies are racing (harder then the XP migration) to fix this as well.  

Morton's Salt girl says it best.  "When it rains, it pours."