The Cornell Store has recently changed several of its marketing policies in an effort to make textbook prices more competitive to combat the growing number of students who have begun purchasing textbooks from outside sources, according to Margie Whiteleather, strategic projects manager for the Cornell Store.

Textbook sales at the Cornell Store plummeted by 21 percent over the last four years, according to figures released this week by store officials. 

Rather than go through the Cornell Store, many Cornell professors support local independent bookseller Buffalo Street Books by selling their textbooks through the store. 

Alta Gracia employees earn a “living wage,” which is roughly three times more than that of comparable apparel workers in the country, and they work in a setting that has been designed with their safety in mind.

New Outer Limits columnist Hazel Gunapala ungracefully tries to picnic in the Cornell Store.

Since Vladimir Nabokov’s death in 1977, a Swiss bank vault has guarded 138 pencil-written note cards that the writer of Lolita fame instructed to destroy. Thirty years later, copies of these cards, the unfinished draft of Nabokov’s last novel The Original of Laura, will be available today at the Cornell Store, one day prior to the global release date.

This is the first in a two-part series examining the future of textbooks.

Textbook sales at the Cornell Store are down at least 5 percent from last fall, as strapped Cornellians are increasingly choosing cheaper alternatives for their books. It remains to be seen how the Cornell Store, which has seen lowered profits from textbook sales throughout the last five years, will adapt to an industry that is in an uncertain state of flux.

Many students, such as Sarah Erickson ’09, turned to Amazon.com to save money. “Buying my books online saved me $75,” Erickson said, adding that shopping online “was easier and allowed me to buy my books in advance.”

The problem of sweatshop labor met the ivory tower on Tuesday in Ives Hall, as representatives from a closed Honduran Russell Athletics factory pleaded for students to support them in their crusade against the clothing giant.

“This particular factory went through a particularly hard battle to recognize a union,” said Marlene Ramos ’09, a member of the Cornell Organization for Labor Action who also helped translate the Spanish dialect of the workers.