KEARNEY — Once upon a time, before textbooks could be digital or even ordered online, bookstores with pages patrons could flip through and inhale the “new book smell” thrived.
Though there are no remnants of the building now, Follett’s Campus Bookstore used to be such a place.
Flashback to August some-30 years ago, University of Nebraska at Kearney students all would be lined up throughout the bookstore, waiting to purchase their books for the semester.
According to Dick Reiter, whose parents, Ray and Ruth, ran Follett’s Bookstore, and the Bookmark at “college corner” before that, college books became a big business in Kearney back in the 1950s.
“Up until that point, they would just check books out to the kids like you do in high school,” Reiter recalled.
Follett also ran the on-campus bookstore for several years before moving to the off-campus location east of campus at 2511 Ninth Ave. When the contract was given to another operator in the mid-1980s, Follett moved.
Between being Bookmark and Follett, the building was an art supply store.
Follett sold books out of the store next to the former Luke and Jake’s location until 2008. Though it had some other inventory, 90% of its business was textbooks, according to prior reporting by the Kearney Hub in 2005.
