Duke Stores Employee Oversees 40,000 Textbooks

The academic year doesn’t start until later this month, but Jeff Perkins got into the swing of things early last week.

Perkins, a 28-year employee at Duke, oversees textbook delivery and sorting at the University Store in the Bryan Center, where every year, he spends an entire day watching the delivery of thousands of books for students. Early last week, moving crews spent the morning removing about 3,500 pieces of clothing from the basement level of the store before about 40,000 books were delivered to take over the space. 

Permanent shelves along the walls were filled and 21 temporary, rolling book cases were brought in, each encased in plastic wrap to prevent books from falling out. Perkins carefully unwrapped each shelf and went about sorting books to make sure they were stacked properly and lined up with tags showing class information.

“I like the challenge of solving the puzzle,” Perkins said as he adjusted the books side-by-side. 

In his nearly three decades overseeing book delivery for Duke, Perkins said the biggest changes have been the volume of what shows up. The bottom level of the University Store once stored over 100,000 books year-round, but now is only taken up for eight weeks at the beginning of each semester. With students turning to Internet shopping as a way to find textbooks, fewer are needed on campus.

“In the last 10 years, I probably haven’t seen many books I’d want to read,” Perkins said with a chuckle. “I’ve pretty much read or looked at or thumbed through a lot of the titles we have, so most of it is old news to me now.”