UCSD Bookstore Has 80,000 Titles Covered, the Most in the County

Frustrated because none of the bookstores you visited carry “Lung Sounds, A Practical Guide” (includes book and audio cassette)? Have you searched far and wide for “Numerical Recipes in C,” but none of the bookstores carry it?

Perhaps you are looking for something more practical, like the 1989 edition of “Baseball Superstats,” but your local bookstore is sold out.

If any or all of the above books appeal to you but are missing at your favorite bookstore, try the newly dedicated UC San Diego bookstore, which carries 80,000 titles and about 400,000 volumes, including the previously named books.

UCSD Chancellor Richard Atkinson dedicated the bookstore, the largest in San Diego County, on Tuesday, three months after it opened. Bookstore manager Paul Mares was beaming like a proud parent throughout the day, amid flowers and congratulations sent by many university and college bookstore managers across the nation.

“The college bookstore industry is something you stay in. We (managers) all know each other,” said Mares, who has managed the UCSD bookstore for 24 years.

Mares was joined at Tuesday’s festivities by about 20 bookstore managers from other colleges throughout Southern California, who came to check out the new digs.

Several Special Events

The university has scheduled several events throughout October to celebrate the new bookstore. Oliver Sacks, best-selling author of “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat,” will be signing copies of his latest book, “Seeing Voices,” on Thursday.

On the same day, Heinz-Otto Peitgen will give an audio-visual presentation on fractals at 6 p.m. at the Price Center Theatre. The presentation will include “a spectacular, full-color demonstration of fractal images using complex computer graphics.”

“What are fractals?” you ask. Do not bother looking for a definition in the dictionary, because it is not there. UCSD spokeswoman Barbara Fisch said fractals represent “the delicate structure that underlies chaos in nature.” In the everyday world, this means, for example, that something like “a cloud or mountain is actually ordered and not chaotic.”

Fisch went on to say that “chaos is a relatively new area of scientific study.”

Peitgen is an expert on fractals and wrote “The Beauty of Fractals” and “The Science of Fractal Images.” Both books have been used by UCSD faculty members.

“We know what the faculty wants. We get it for them. But we don’t understand what they do with it,” said Mares, past president of the National Assn. of College Stores and current president of the nonprofit College Stores Research and Educational Foundation.

Meanwhile, fractals and modern technology are together wreaking havoc on Kant’s “thing-in-itself” philosophy, which says that the “thing” represents the limit, rather than the object, of man’s knowledge. Fractals are forcing “things” like mountains and clouds to cough up their deepest secrets.

The bookstore, which covers two levels, is open to the public. In addition to books, the store carries some clothing items and general merchandise. All items, except computers, can be purchased by the public.

According to Mares, the UCSD bookstore is the 20th largest college bookstore in the United States and sold about $6.5 million worth of books last year.