EAST LANSING — It’s the last chapter for the Archives Book Shop, a used bookstore that’s been around since the 1980s.
Ray Walsh, who owns Archives and its sister store, Curious Book Shop, said it was time.
“Our customer base is shrinking, they’re passing away, and we’re getting significantly fewer people coming in,” said Walsh, who reviews books for the Lansing State Journal as a contributing columnist.
The store on Grand River Avenue will close at the end of this month. Books are now on sale for half off and Walsh has at least 20,000 volumes, and around 100,000 items all told, to sell, donate or move somewhere else.
Some of the books are already in boxes in the aisles of the Curious Book Shop, also on Grand River Avenue, right across from the heart of Michigan State University’s main campus. Walsh plans to keep his Curious Book Shop open.
The Archives opened in 1987, about 20 years after Walsh first started selling books out of a garage while he was a student at MSU. He soon established the Curious Book Shop and moved it to its current storefront in 1973.