Bookstores of all sorts and sizes have long histories on local street

In a world where theme restaurants, Hollywood movies and Websites have become as common place to islands in the Caribbean as they are to metropolitan cities, the term local has begun to fade into the background. In this new and ever-popular global approach to business, the "shop around the corner" has been made available to corners worldwide.

On East Liberty Street, not far from the Michigan Theater, stand two examples of how bookstores have graduated into the global market. Borders Bookstore started in 1973 as nothing more than the idea of a pair of local brothers Tom and Louis Borders. Today, besides its Ann Arbor store, Borders locations can be found across the United States and as far away as Singapore, England, Scotland and Australia.

DANA LINNANE/Daily David's Books employee Paul Sweeney poses in front of his store's 15-year-old "trade-mark" mural. Border's Books and Music's downtown Ann Arbor store is located next door.

Next door, above one of the area's most well-known murals, is David's Books. A local used-book icon, it is still a haven for bulky piles of rare fiction, non-fiction and other rarities. But today it is also home to a Web-linked computer and a telephone where book dealers from around the globe call in special orders.

The Borders brothers started selling used books in the early '70s and decided in 1973 to start an official store in the South State Street location now home to Steve and Barry's. The store first occupied nearly 5,000 square-feet, and eventually was expanded to twice its original size.

In 1986, the brothers decided to try their luck at another Borders store in Birmingham, Mich. After that came a store in Indianapolis, and then two or three more new stores through the Midwest. By 1992, the Borders brothers owned around 35 stores, and decided to sell their company to K-Mart Corp. After the sale they decided to leave the book business completely.

Desiring more space for a larger inventory, the new owners moved the store to its current location on East Liberty, enabling it to acquire an area of more than 40,000 square feet. Also included in the new store was a music section and a full-service cafe.

Sharon Gambin, an employee of Ann Arbor's Borders Books and Music, described the brothers' intentions when building the new store as "aiming to keep the 'nooks and crannies' of the original."

"A lot of bookstores are box-like," Gambin said. "We wanted to create a kind of store within a store effect."

K-Mart did not hold on to Borders for long. In the spring of 1995, K-Mart sold Borders and its other book franchise, Walden Books - both became publicly held companies. Ann Arbor's once local bookstore, having already spread nationwide, now sought to go international. A store in Singapore opened in fall of 1997, followed in 1998 by stores in London and Brighton, England, Glasgow, Scotland and Melbourne, Australia.

Despite its chain-store status and the increasing familiarity of the name Borders, the Ann Arbor location seems to maintain a distinct character from all the rest.

"All the procedures and methodologies of Borders stores worldwide started at this store in Ann Arbor," Gambin said. "We've always been the store upon which strategies are predicated and we are still a place where new things are tried."

But as Border's continues to spread all over the world, its neighbor of almost five years has remained in one spot in one country - above the painted heads of Woody Allen, Edgar Allen Poe, Herman Hesse, Franz Kafka and Anaïs Nin.

"In the summer when the windows are open and the winds are up you can hear people speculating about who the people are in our mural," laughed long-time David's employee Paul Sweeney. "The artist did it about 15 years ago and hasn't show his face since - but in the meantime it's really come to symbolize downtown Ann Arbor."

But while David's Books has not expanded its used books business worldwide, the world has come to it in many ways.

"The charm of the store is clutter and how long it takes to find everything," Sweeney said. "But the Internet has really changed the way we do business outside of the store. We get mail orders from private book collectors all over the country - we even deal with large book dealers like Amazon.com."

Sweeny said the Border's location change has only served to increase Dave's customer load as Border's shoppers are referred to the store to track down out of print books.

Ann Arbor native and LSA first-year student Amy Kimball said the 1994 Borders location change was a drastic improvement for Border's as well.

"It has a completely different atmosphere. The music and the cafe really add a lot," said Kimball.

Devotees of Ann Arbor Borders will have a second option to go to in April. A smaller store is to open in Arborland, located on Washtenaw and US 23. The store, continuing with the tradition of its sister store, will also introduce new, experimental concepts in the book business. A prominent feature of this location will be "Paper Chase" - a British company recently bought by Borders, which sells a variety of paper and stationery goods.

Sweeny said there are no plans to expand Dave's Book's to other locations but that as long as their are students on campus there will always be a market for used books.

"People have discovered they can bring in their syllabuses and find the books they need for much cheaper than in the normal places," Sweeny said. "But come early - once two or three students in the same class come in we start to run out of the harder-to-find books."

02-04-99