After 25 years of using Barnes and Noble as their provider, ONU has decided to switch to eCampus. Public Safety plans on moving into the ONU Gear Shop’s former bookstore early in the Fall 2026 semester.
Since July of 2000, Ohio Northern University (ONU) has partnered with Barnes and Noble for their textbook needs. However, since their contract ended this year, ONU has decided to part ways with their former provider.
“I’ve been here for 26 years. We were a Barnes and Noble bookstore from, officially, July of 2000 up until May of this year, 2025. The contract with Barnes and Noble was up, and the university decided to go with a different bookstore-gear-shop provider, and so that’s what they did,” says Joshua Szippl, ONU’s Gear Shop and former bookstore manager.
ONU switched to eCampus as its bookstore in May of 2025, leading to a major transition in the Gear Shop, where the former bookstore was managed. Now, all course material orders are processed through the eCampus portal, and the Gear Shop only distributes orders shipped there.
With Barnes and Noble, students and professors could contact the Gear Shop staff on campus to address any troubles with textbooks and class materials. The new bookstore, on the other hand, now requires all issues to go through eCampus’ customer support.
The former bookstore space was used at the beginning of the Fall 2025 semester to distribute “about 1500 textbook packages” to students, according to Szippl. However, the university is planning on repurposing the space as a new home for Public Safety.
“Relocating Public Safety has been a long-term goal, and the recent changes to the bookstore provided a timely opportunity to move forward with a new, central space,” says Chief of Public Safety Craig Scott. “This relocation to the McIntosh Center is designed to significantly improve our service to the campus community by creating a convenient, single location for key services.”
Services Public Safety will be able to provide from their new headquarters include “student IDs, parking passes, and any questions or concerns about campus safety,” according to Scott.
Scott goes on to explain that they are “currently in the design phase of the relocation process” and that “the plan is for Public Safety to be fully moved and operational in McIntosh Center at the start of the Fall 2026 semester.”
The plan for textbook distribution in the future isn’t clear. However, the Gear Shop does plan on using the space again for the January rush, at least for the moment.
For most, the transition was relatively smooth. However, with such a significant change, there were bound to be a few hiccups.
“It’s been a little bumpy, but that’s normal for anything new,” says Professor of Chemistry Tevye Celius. “We did not have a smooth start, but I think we handled it in an acceptable way.”
The sentiment was shared by Assistant Professor of Chemistry Kelly Hall, who says, “…in some areas there were impacts like, for instance, in lab courses, delayed lab notebooks and stuff like that. That is stressful for a student.”
As the first semester of ONU’s use of eCampus comes to an end, only time will tell how staff and students’ experiences with the new bookstore will change.
Editor’s Note: This article was updated (11/19/2025) to change “orders are processed through the eCamus portal” to read “orders are processed through the eCampus portal.”