It will soon be that time of year when students from far and wide come to Bellevue College’s campus for fall quarter. Students who are new to BC should know a thing or two about one of the most important places on campus for their academic future: the bookstore.
BC’s bookstore is located on the north side of campus on the first floor of the Student Services building. Once inside the Student Services building, it is hard to miss the giant “Bookstore” sign right above the entrance. There, future and current students can find everything they need from miscellaneous study materials to candy bars. A fair warning from bookstore employees: Don’t plan on bringing your backpack into the bookstore. You will be asked to set all bags and belongings aside as you browse through the books.
Tony Blanchett, a supervisor for the BC bookstore, had a few key pieces of info for new BC students. The first one is that the bookstore is there to provide students material in a timely manner. “Sometimes students buy books online and they have homework three or four days into the quarter and still don’t have their stuff,” he said.
Students can also visit BC bookstore website, located at http://bcc.collegestoreonline.com. Here they can use the website to look up what books are required or optional for the classes they are enrolled in or compare prices on textbooks. “Our website is great. The website actually helps students find books cheaper than even our store. Textbooks are expensive and wherever it’s cheapest, we always try and help students find out and point them in the right direction,” Blanchett explained.
Thinking about book purchases early can help make the first week not as stressful. “It gets tough, start looking early! The website will tell you where to rent them. Students who wait more than a few days into the quarter, the books are sold out. If you put in a little time, we will save you money,” said Blanchett.
For those students who require technology for their classes, the bookstore also offers quarter-long rental options. According to the BC bookstore website, the bookstore currently has ultrabooks, netbooks, tablets, drawing tablets and graphing calculators available to loan to students for a fee.
Matthew Usher, a student at BC, said that he has only needed to use the bookstore a few times but found it to be “a pretty nice bookstore.”
He said those students who would rather save $10 end up waiting three weeks for websites like Amazon to send textbooks and can run into some trouble in the first days of the quarter.
Online book rentals for fall quarter will begin in August. The bookstore’s summer hours are from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Thursday and 8 a.m. to 12 p.m. on Fridays.
For more information, visit the bookstore website at http://bcc.collegestoreonline.com or send an email to bookstore@bellevuecollege.edu.