Why the Textbooks Were Gone: Coop Ponders Some Answers

By Sept. 24, five days after registration last Fall, a large number of students -- more than usual -- were walking up to clerks in the Coop annex and complaining they couldn't find the textbooks they needed on the shelves. A count at the end of the day showed they were right: almost 1,000 out of 3,000 titles on the reading lists were missing.

The Coop did nothing to hide its chagrin. "The situation isn't good and there's no point in minimizing it," Presdent Stanley F. Teele told the annual meeting of Coop members a month later. And, at the meeting, Teele heard from the Harvard Undergraduate Council one of the angriest statements ever directed at the Coop by a student organization:

"The Council feels compelled to lodge the strongest complaint over the inefficiency and chaos reigning in the Coop's textbook area...If the Coop would demonstrate the same enthusiasm for the comprehensive stocking of texts as it does for pajamas and shaving lotions, it would be performing a far more valuable function...[It is] the Coop's responsibility to provide honest answers and to make a far more determined effort."

Arguing that inefficiency within the store is not to blame, Teele and other Coop officials in the three months since the meeting have provided their own answer. If it is correct, the Coop will need help from a number of sources within the University this term to prevent another massive textbook shortage next Fall.

Last year, they point out, the Coop took its first step toward filling the Fall shelves at the beginning of May, when it sent a form letter to all professors teaching courses in the Fall and asked for a list of their required books. At the bottom was stamped "Early Information is Important!" The reason for the exclamation mark was simple: it would take publishers three to six weeks to ship the textbooks that the Coop ordered.

Less than half of the forms had been sent back by the end of the Spring term. "That was understandable," John G. Morrill, Coop general manager, commented in a recent interview. "They wanted a little free time to look over the publishers' lists, see what was new in their field." The Coop, therefore, did not bother the professors who had not returned their lists.

By the middle of August, close to the deadline for ordering books that would arrive before school opened, only a few more forms had been sent back in -- much less than had been returned in previous summers. "Second notices" were mailed by the Coop -- and most of them laid unanswered in the offices of professors who were away.

The Coop had less than two-thirds of the forms on Sept. 11. Secretaries were put on the phone full-time and told to talk to anyone -- professors, department heads, section men -- who knew the reading lists. By Sept. 24 the Coop had ordered texts for only three-quarters of the 825 courses it was expected to supply.

But by that time another, more traditional problem was depleting the shelves. Too few books had been ordered in a number of courses; as they sold out, title by title, blue tags were put up indicating they had been reordered. But students wondered why the supply of so many textbooks had been exhausted so soon. "Because estimates of course sizes are just educated guesses," Morrill answered. "Even the professors who sent us their own estimates could be pretty far off."

While ordering books, the Coop generally asked for enough to supply the number of students who took the course the previous year -- the same way the Registrar's office assigned classrooms, and with the same predictable amount of error. For new courses it relied on professors' estimates or simply made a guess.

By Sept. 24, the Coop knew it had guessed wrong in every course where texts had been sold out. But it still did not know how wrong. The Registrars' office, which compiled its final list of course enrollments in October, would not give the Coop any preliminary figures. A text re-order was occasionally held up while a Coop secretary tried to contact professors for the enrollment in their courses -- but they often could not be reached.

The result was that many students, such as a large number in Soc Sci 8, were left without books for more than half a term. The Coop ordered 350 copies of several Soc Sci 8 texts in the summer -- about the number that were bought the year before. But the year before there had been a limit on course enrollment; last Fall, without a limit, enrollment soared to 549. The Coop didn't know when it made its first re-order, nor its second. It found out in time for the third.

There was no one to rescue the Coop from this kind of mistake -- not even a publisher. "We used to be able to tell the publishers we had a special problem, ask for a book to be shipped in a week or ten days and get it," Morrill said. "But too many firms were merging and moving away from our area. It wasn't so easy anymore."

Did the Coop add to the delay after books arrived from the publisher? Only slightly, Coop officials argue -- their triplicate filing system sometimes slowed down transfer of books from packages to shelves, but was efficient in the long run. And, if students didn't complain about a sold-out book, then the clerks didn't always notice it immediately, delaying its re-order. But the clerks, Coop officials insist, were and are as good as the staff of any Boston department store; what may have looked like "chaos" in the annex was the necessary moving of books.

Coop officials also permitted students from Boston College, Boston University and other schools to come to the Coop for texts their own bookstores didn't have. "We expected them and counted them in when we ordered," Morrill explained. "They weren't stealing Harvard books, and they were paying for the privilege of shopping here, since they didn't earn patronage refunds."

After Criticism -- Silence

Now, three months later, very little has come from the criticisms that arose during the Fall book shortage. Members of the Harvard Undergraduate Council have met once with Coop officials, and have promised to draft a letter to professors explaining the students' stake in the Coop's problems.

But Coop officials themselves have not done much more. Although they expect almost all Spring term books to be on the shelves by Feb. 7, they admit this is mostly due to the ease with which professors can be reached during the winter and is not a sign that a large textbook shortage can be prevented this Fall.

For such a sign Coop officials are looking to Arnold H. Swenson, formerly associate director of the Columbia University bookstore and an executive at the Columbia store since 1941. When he became Coop book director last month, Swenson said he was confident that enough could be done by this Fall to rule out the possibility of a shortage -- without any radical changes in the present textbook department.

This is an important point, because the Coop -- despite its expansion along Palmer Street -- is not in a position to finance any expensive addition to its facilities or overhaul of its procedures in the near future. Its net income dropped slightly last year for the second time in a row, despite a rise in sales., This was due to the cost of constructing a new store at M.I.T. And soon the Coop will have to start paying for the Palmer Street annex.

The annex itself is not expected to add much to the Coop's net income. Scheduled for completion this spring, it will house general and reference books on the ground floor, paperbacks and records on the second and textbooks on the third, with escalators between floors -- and a freight elevator that may be used by customers during the rush periods at the beginning of each term. Coop officials are sure the annex will bring an increase in sales, but that the extra money will be needed to pay its operating costs.

"What we want to do now is try to hold the status quo on the patron age refund and not put much money into expansion," Morrill explained. Even so, he admitted, there may have to be serious consideration this March of a one per cent cut in the present refund rate of eight per cent on charge purchases and ten per cent on cash.

But Swenson believes he has an answer to the problem of textbook shortages that may cost absolutely nothing. "I did all my work at Columbia by personal contact," he says. "I knew the professors and the department heads and they trusted me. That's what I have to achieve here."

Personal contact is the way Swenson hopes to win agreement and enthusiasm for the proposals that he is now considering:

* A joint Faculty-Coop committee chaired by a professor or Dean, that might also include some students and the Registrar. Its members could, for example, talk about Coop deadlines at Faculty meetings or voice Faculty complaints to the Coop. A similar committee was recently set up at Yale.

* An agreement with the Registrar's office to ensure that course enrollment figures are sent to the Coop early in the term.

* A single reading list form that Lamont, Radcliffe Library and the Coop could send jointly to professors.

Attempting to achieve any of these proposals will be a test for Swenson. He will not only have to describe the Coop's textbook problems to professors, but also explain why the Coop has done so little about them in the past. "Something must be wrong," a professor whose reading list arrived at the Coop Sept. 16 said last Fall. "I did the same thing this year I've done every year, and they never complained before."

Swenson's chances of getting early course enrollment figures have gotten worse since the Fall. Registrar Robert Shenton, who took over the post in September, has told the Coop he will now release no figures until the end of each term, and then only by request. The release of the current enrollment in any course is within the discretion of the professor teaching it. Shenton argues, and should not be made by the Registrar.

And Swenson will have to dispel a general impression that all of the Coop's troubles can be tied to its own "inefficiency and chaos," and that its textbook and general book departments are somehow below par.

That is a tall order for Swenson and also for the Coop, which, until recently, had not given the problem much of its attention and is now busy with other matters, including planning for the new annex.

Heaven and Earth

But the Coop has apparently weighed seriously the possible reaction to another textbook shortage, another thousand titles missing. "If we fall down in supplying the essential tools of education, we're really falling down in our job," Morrill said. "I'll move heaven and earth to aoid that.