Book Store Closing

After 40 years in the book store business, Ethna McKiernan, announced this week that she is closing "Irish Books and Media Inc." in Minneapolis, Minnesota -- http://www.irishbook.com/

Irish Books was founded by Ethna's father, Eoin McKiernan, as a spin off project of his Irish American Cultural Institute, in the early 1960's. Irish Books' January newsletter quoted Ms. McKiernan as saying this about the decision to close, "There are too many contributing factors, including pressures from corporate giants swallowing up smaller publishers or raising order minimums to 100 copies." (Source: Mary Ann Grossman of the Pioneer Press newspaper)

Perhaps Ms. McKiernan explored several options before she decided to close her store but one idea I would promote would be for my alma mater, the University of St. Thomas (UST), to reach an agreement with her to re-locate the book store in its St. Paul or Minneapolis campuses perhaps simply merging it into the current campus book stores. Such a move would be good for at least two reasons:

1.) Having Irish Books integrated into UST would supplement the university's Irish Studies academic program, and

2.) The book store could be set up as a separate entity run by UST's Opus School of Business to provide current UST students with a hands on business experience.

Personally I love small book shops so it is sad to see such an entity as Irish Books close its doors.

Todd