Greetings

Hi,

My name is Naomi and I am an intern at the Manchester Development Education Project bookshop. DEP is an educational charity that works with teachers, youth workers and other educators to promote sustainable development, ethical living, diversity and global education. As well as running a range of projects with teachers and schools DEP also has a bookshop that sells resources for teachers, educators and the general public, relating to the issues it promotes. This bookshop also helps to raise money so that DEP can continue to carry out its amazing work.

As an intern I have been helping to promote the bookshop in order to raise its profile and get it known to as many people as possible. I've decided to start a blog in order to chart my experience as an intern and also to let people know about the various activities and changes I have planned for the bookshop.

I have already been with DEP a month now and have been coming in two days a week. My first task as an intern was to carry out a complete stock check. This took about three days, but it was worthwhile because I now have an intimate knowledge of what's on the shelves (it was hard at times to resist reading the books).

Whilst carrying out the stock check I realised that the bookshop has a lot of sale stock, something I wanted to reduce. I decided to place a considerable portion of it on Amazon. Three weeks later we have sold 16 sale books and I am now slightly addicted to selling things on Amazon. It has really brought home to me how much Amazon and the internet in general has changed our buying habits and book selling. I hardly ever go to bookshops any more. When I do it's usually to have a browse and kill some time. My most recent visit to a bookshop was done more out of necessity than choice - I had to get a birthday present for someone and didn't have time to wait for an Amazon order to arrive. Compared with Amazon, and indeed with most other bookshops, the DEP bookshop is at a massive disadvantage because it is tucked away from the road on the Manchester Metropolitan University campus in Didsbury. The bookshop is usually open from 10-5 on weekdays, but I'm only able to come in two days a week. Most of the other DEP staff are part-time and their work takes them out of the office a lot. By comparison Amazon is easily accessible (to anyone with a device that allows internet access and an internet connection, which of course isn't everyone) and it never has to close. It is there 24 hours a day, every day of the year. Out of all the orders we've had on Amazon so far half have been placed out with our opening hours. You'd be fairly shocked to encounter someone who hasn't heard of Amazon, whereas the majority of people aren't familiar with the DEP bookshop.

Nevertheless, rather than despair I am seeing this as a challenge. It is part of my task as an intern to overcome the obstacles facing the bookshop and get more people coming through our door. One of the things I have done is to create a book group. However, rather than just read general fiction the focus of the book group is on books that promote the issues close to DEP's heart - the environment, sustainable development, climate change, human rights, global justice, equality and diversity. Although this might arguably limit the books we can read, I'm hoping it will offer people something unique and that we will be able to get some interesting debates going on these important issues.

For the first meeting, held on Thursday 30th June (the group will be meeting on the last Thursday of every month), we read and discussed Heat: How We Can Stop the Planet Burning by George Monbiot. I will be posting a review of the book on here soon. Details of the next meeting will also be coming soon.

As well as the book group my plans for the near future include author events, story telling sessions, cashing in on the (hopefully) sunny weather and taking the bookshop outside, and carrying out a complete overhaul of the bookshop.

Right, well I think I've gone on for long enough and thank you if you made it this far. Please keep coming back for more (shorter) updates!