Visiting the bookstore at Indiana's University of Notre Dame

Local bookstores are among my favorite stops on the road, and the campus bookstore at Indiana's University of Notre Dame is a particular favorite of mine.

Good local bookstores are a great source of books by local authors and books about local history. Good college bookstores carry a selection of college logo wear and maybe a few interesting university press books. Bookstores are an especially good road trip stop if they have decent restrooms and a coffee shop. The Notre Dame bookstore has all of the hallmarks of a good local bookstore, a good college bookstore and a great road trip stop.

We've visited college bookstores in cramped classroom sized spaces, in aging store fronts in a nearby downtown and in huge warehouse-like stores on campuses. But the Notre Dame store is special, with its inviting ambience and wide variety of books that appeal to a general audience beyond text book toting students.

The university's bookstore is in the Eck Visitor Center building, and like many buildings on Notre Dame's architecturally photogenic campus, it is a modern building designed to fit in with the university's vintage buildings.

Bookstore visitors enter through the building's sunny atrium.

While you'll find plenty of school supplies and textbooks tucked away on the store's second floor, the store's first floor is a place you can enjoy spending time browsing.

The bookstore's first floor includes a large section of university wear and memorabilia that is larger than many stand-alone clothing stores and a large area with books arranged like a conventional bookstore with plenty of places to curl up with a good book or get in some quiet study time.

The store stocks current fiction, popular non-fiction, children's books, classics, magazines, and a variety of religious books and accessories. We found several popular history books that we ended up purchasing the last time we visited the store.

University officials envisioned the store as a positive reflection on the campus and its strong academic history when building it as a "world-class bookstore" in the late 1990s.

The store is also a center of the wider university life with a cafe/coffee shop and a schedule of events that includes extended hours during home football weekends when cheerleaders and Notre Dame's leprechaun mascot visit as fans shop for t-shirts and jackets to wear to the game.

There is a satellite bookstore across the street from campus in a mixed-use development called Eddy Commons. The satellite store fills the need to pick up a T-shirt or gift book, and it was a nice quick stop when we stayed at the nearby Fairfield Inn.

Still, I appreciate a really nice bookstore and think it's well worth the time to go on over to campus and check out Notre Dame's main bookstore.

Speaking of going to Notre Dame's campus, check out Back to School at Indiana's University of Notre Dame, O'Shag Hall at Indiana's University of Notre Dame, Indiana's University of Notre Dame embraces "Touchdown Jesus", and Basilica of the Sacred Heart is the heart of Indiana's University of Notre Dame campus. I also posted a review of our stay at the Fairfield Inn across from Notre Dame's campus.

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