Seminary Cooperative Bookstores, Inc., founded in 1961, is a not-for-profit

bookstore Bookselling is the commercial trading of books which is the retail and distribution end of the publishing process. People who engage in bookselling are called booksellers, bookdealers, bookpeople, bookmen, or bookwomen. The founding of librari ...

with two branches in

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

. Its flagship, known colloquially as the Seminary Co-op or simply the Sem Co-op, is located at 5751 S. Woodlawn Avenue. Prior to October 2012, it was located a block away in the basement of the

Chicago Theological Seminary Founded in 1855, the Chicago Theological Seminary (CTS) is the oldest higher education institution in the City of Chicago and was established with two principal goals: first, to educate pastors who would minister to people living on the new weste ...

, next to the campus of the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...

, and stocked the largest selection of academic volumes in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

throughout an extensive maze of shelves. The Co-op also operates 57th Street Books, also in the

Hyde Park Hyde Park may refer to: Places England * Hyde Park, London, a Royal Park in Central London * Hyde Park, Leeds, an inner-city area of north-west Leeds * Hyde Park, Sheffield, district of Sheffield * Hyde Park, in Hyde, Greater Manchester Austra ...

neighborhood, which houses a carefully curated collection of general interest titles, including kids' books, science fiction, mysteries and cookbooks. The Co-op's reputation was so great that

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

invited manager Jack Cella to either open a branch in New York City or leave and open a new store there. Until the university gained its own neighborhood academic bookstore in the late 1990s, many Columbia scholars ordered books from the Co-op. Currently, the Co-op has over 53,000 members, 3,500 of whom are located overseas. The following countries have at least 100 members: Japan, the United Kingdom, Germany, Canada, and Australia. The following countries have at least 50 members: Taiwan, Spain, the Netherlands, Italy, Israel, Hong Kong, France, Brazil, and Korea. Other nations with significant membership include Sweden, Switzerland, Norway, Ireland, India, and Argentina. In September 2008, the Co-op launched ''The Front Table'', a web magazine for book lovers and Co-op members.

Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the U ...

's patronage of the bookstore garnered attention in the wake of his election. In 2017 the Co-op announced that on April 1, 2017 it would take back the shares of "inactive members" who had not purchased anything in 2 years, unless they contacted the store and requested otherwise. In addition, the Co-op no longer requires the purchase of stock to become a member and receive 10% of monthly purchases in store credit. In 2019, the Seminary Co-op Bookstores, Inc. became the country’s first not-for-profit bookstores whose mission is bookselling.Jeff Deutsch (Oct 6, 2019). The Seminary Co-op: A Not-for-Profit Bookstore https://www.semcoop.com/seminary-co-op-not-profit-bookstore As the stores' director Jeff Deutsch writes in his letter about the change, "Establishing the store as a not-for-profit (as opposed to its current status as a strict retail operation) also acknowledges the financial realities of our business model, which privileges cultural value over financial dividends. Our new structure codifies this mission, allowing us to invest in the browsing experience rather than overly concern ourselves with the vagaries of the market at a given moment."

References

External links

Official site

Front Table
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