To our members and friends, 

As Marketing Director of the Seminary Co-op, I would like to thank you for your support of our COVID-19 Relief Fund. We are so heartened by the generous contributions we have already received, and are humbled to have surpassed the halfway mark toward our $250,000 fundraising goal. But we still need your help. Your contributions will allow us to maintain our immediate financial commitments, including those we have made to our 45 booksellers, and to the publishers whose scholarly, idiosyncratic, and enduring books line our shelves and create the browsing experience we all miss during this time of separation.

In more familiar times, we would bring our community together to browse our shelves and congregate around the Front Table or in anticipation of an author conversation (we hosted or supported 700 author events in and around Chicago last year!). Instead, we have transformed our stores into web-order fulfillment centers for the time being. While we look forward to re-opening the Co-op for browsing and community gathering, our physical space has radically changed to meet our immediate operational needs during this time of social distancing. Work stations have cropped up around the store and in the stacks; our coursebook floor has been reconfigured to facilitate efficient web order fulfillment; information desks have been transformed into shipping stations; and we are taking abundant precautions to ensure a safe working environment for our staff. We would like to provide a glimpse of our daily work by sharing images of the stores.
 

While our space has transformed, the dialogue around who we are and what we do has not. We remain committed to bringing the browsing experience to you, wherever you are. As our immediate future clarifies, we look forward to resuming familiar forms of engagement. Our newsletter will return later this week, new Open Stacks podcast episodes are on the horizon, and we recently launched a Children’s book recommendation campaign (need a recommendation, simply email kidsbooks@semcoop.com). With these initial steps, we hope to help our community anchor our time apart in books. 
 

We are indebted to you for your support and advocacy. We are so close to our $250,000 goal. Please consider supporting the Co-op and, by doing so, ensuring that this space of inquiry and contemplation endures. Our collective investment now will ensure the Co-op remains, as Co-op member Aleksander Hemon put it, a “place of hope.”