The records of the University Cellar have been arranged into three series: History and background; Administrative records; and Former employees files. The bulk of the records concerns the administration of University Cellar with extensive documentation of its financial operations and labor negotiations with the Industrial Workers of the World. Included are board of directors minutes and minutes of the Store, Retail, and Operations Councils.
On September 25, 1969, more than a hundred demonstrating students occupied the University of Michigan's University Administration Building (now the Literature, Science and the Arts Building) and demanded that the University establish a student-controlled bookstore. Michigan state police were called to the campus for the first time in history to break up the demonstration and the protesters were arrested.
In response to this, and as a result of meetings held with leaders of various student organizations, the Board of Regents approved the creation of a student-controlled bookstore in September 1969. The bookstore was capitalized at $200,000, with $100,000 transferred to the store by the Board of Regents from the Student Vehicle Fund, and an additional $100,000 to be raised by way of a one-time assessment of five dollars per student to be collected in the fall of 1970.
The University wished to insulate itself from any financial liabilities the bookstore might incur, and so a separate and non-controlled corporation, The Board for the Student Bookstore, Inc., was established on April 13, 1970. The corporation was also authorized by the Regents to take over the University Discount Store, which had opened in the Student Activities Building in January 1969, and to assume that organization's liabilities.
The bookstore operated on the first floor of the Michigan Union until September 1970, when it moved to the basement. At this time the official name of the organization was changed to University Cellar, Inc.
The composition of the University Cellar's Board of Directors reflected its student origins. Of the ten-member board, six were to be students, three faculty members, and one an administrator. This arrangement proved troublesome in that it was sometimes difficult to obtain a quorum (four students and two faculty), particularly at summer meetings.
In 1974 the University Cellar outbid several companies for the right to establish a bookstore in the North Campus Commons to serve the School of Music, the College of Engineering, and the College of Architecture and Design. This also marked the last year that the bookstore received any type of financial assistance from the University.
In 1979 the hourly workers of the University Cellar voted in favor of representation by the Industrial Workers of the World. Local 660, the University Cellar's union, was the largest IWW local in the world during its existence; its members constituted approximately ten percent of the total worldwide membership of the IWW.
The Michigan Union underwent significant renovations beginning in 1980. As part of the project the University Cellar was to help assume part of the cost of the basement renovations. Initially the Board of Directors agreed to this, but membership on the board changed while the project was underway, and the new membership rejected the assumption of any renovation costs. Furthermore, the store was to face a rent increase of approximately sixty-five percent in the remodeled Union. These factors, combined with clauses in the lease agreement between the University Cellar and the Michigan Union which prohibited the former from selling any items that would place it in competition with the latter, such as insignia items of the University of Michigan, caused the University Cellar to seek a new location. An agreement was reached with the owner of the Handicraft Furniture building on the corner of Liberty and Division streets in Ann Arbor, and the bookstore left the Union for its new location in the spring of 1982.
At the Liberty Street location the bookstore was free to sell any items it deemed fit, but the store's financial picture, which had usually shown a modest profit while in the Union, darkened considerably after the relocation. Expenditures for renovations to the store, along with a location now several blocks away from the central campus area, combined to produce financial losses in every year except one. In the fall of 1986 the bookstore was refused a new line of credit, and a tentative buyout offer was accepted from the Barnes and Noble bookstore chain, which had taken the University Cellar's place in the Michigan Union. The lease on the North Campus store was transferred to Barnes and Noble, but further negotiations regarding the transfer of the main store's lease broke down. The University Cellar closed permanently on December 24, 1986. In mid-February 1987 an agreement was signed with Nebraska Books, parent company of Ulrich's Bookstore in Ann Arbor, to take over the Liberty Street location, which was subsequently reopened as Michigan Book and Supply.
