Campus bookstores' functions change as Amazon moves in

Stony Brook, New York

AS school started at Stony Brook University this month, two freshmen, Juan Adames and John Taveras, set out to buy textbooks.

They had not heard yet that the bookstore was a bookstore no more.

This summer, Stony Brook, part of the State University of New York, announced a partnership with the online retailer Amazon, now the university's official book retailer. Students can purchase texts through a Stony Brook-specific Amazon page and have them delivered to campus.

In the campus store where the textbooks used to be, there are now adult colouring books, racks of university-branded polos and windbreakers and three narrow bookshelves displaying assorted…