Thanks to College third-years Elke Zigmont and Eva Crikelair, the Oberlin Book Cooperative is back in a new form. Focusing on unneeded academic texts donated by students, its goal will also be to make literature in general more accessible for students, as well as making it easier for people to get a better sense of community in a revived third space. 

Inspired by the fact that the town used to have one, the College’s Book Co-op began as a final project for an ExCo, “Cooperation and Cooperatives,” in the early 2010s. Zigmont is its president now, while Crikelair is the treasurer. College first-year Bea Becker, College second-years Alice Rosenberg, Tallulah Ahrens-Siegel, and Kristina Birkeland, and College third-year Olivia Tourangeau have been working alongside them.

Zigmont said its main purpose during its founding was to create a system where students could donate and get textbooks for free. Now, Zigmont and Crikelair want to expand that purpose. 

“I imagine it to be similar to the Free Store or the Bike Co-op, where we’ll have hours posted, and those will be staffed by members,” Crikelair said. “During that time, students will come in, almost the way that we used to go into the bookstore when it wasn’t just in Azariah’s Café, and you could ask whether we had certain books that you need for your classes. Hopefully, we’ll have little chairs and cozy spots to read or hang out. There’ll be a practical use for it. It’ll also function like a third space place to hang out and have events.”

The Co-op has been effectively shut down since late 2022, when Tank Hall’s basement — where the Co-op was hosted at the time — flooded, ruining many books. They were eventually returned to Tank Hall but have been there unused ever since. 

“[The co-op] was actually first run out of Hark 101, which is the emergency single,” Zigmont said.  “Once it grew too big for that space, it went downstairs to the office space.”

It then moved to Tank Hall, but the co-op will return to this location in Harkness House for its reopening in the fall.

“This space has been sort of in limbo for a while,” Crikelair said. “It’s cool to think that it will [go back to being] a very useful place.”

Zigmont first had the idea to revive the Book Co-op when she went to a North American Students of Cooperation conference this past fall. 

“I got really inspired there because I attended a series of talks about starting your own co-op and [similar things],” Zigmont said. “They got my logistical brain thinking about how [the Book Co-op] could become a living and self-perpetuating space.”

Zigmont said that she met OSCA alumni who were involved with the Book Co-op, and they essentially gave her a blueprint for starting it up again. 

“The fact that [the Book Co-op] has existed before and it’s been successful is nice,” Crikelair said. “I’m excited about where it could go.”

Zigmont said that the Book Co-op aims to open in earnest in the fall of 2026. Crikelair said that she wants it to be a space where OSCAns and non-OSCAns alike can share in the same system, like the Bike Co-op and the Pottery Co-op.

“It won’t operate exactly in the same way [because] people won’t have required hours as much, but we’re trying to have it also as a way that people can learn about how cooperatives work,” Crikelair said.

Crikelair, Zigmont, and other Book Co-op revivers have many ideas about the usages of its new space, ranging from study hours to tiny desk concerts. 

“We’re always looking for more people,” Crikelair said. “It’s nice to hear other people’s ideas about what the Book Co-op could be.”

Despite all the progress they’ve made, the Book Co-op still needs more books. On May 3, they tentatively plan to host a book swap fair with music and refreshments to get more books for when they open in the fall. They also plan to put boxes in dorms during move-out to collect course materials.

“Right now, we’re working on a lot of logistical issues to make sure that it’s going to be up and running in the fall,” Zigmont said. “My hope, though, is that as well as being a student organization and a resource for students on campus to get free course materials, the Book Co-op is also going to be a really creative space.”