For students, books are an integral part of every college experience.

Bookstore Barnes & Noble College operates nearly 700 campus bookstores nationwide for top academic institutions including Harvard, Yale, Princeton — and now Wallace Community College Selma.

The bookstore is a Barnes & Noble run operation that has been open about two weeks now, said Johnny Moss, Director of Marketing & College Relations at Wallace.

“It’s a new, updated bookstore. This is the first bookstore [at Wallace] that allows students to walk through and grab items as far as snacks, electronics, clothing items — it’s well supplied. So we’re excited about that,” Moss said. “I think they’re going to enjoy it, it’s going to be great to see the students have an area to hang out.”

Moss said the updated bookstore came as a part of the new Student Center where students will be able to have a “one-stop shop” not only for their books but also financial aid, student services, talent search, student government association offices and the cashier.

“So when students come in and they register and they get their financial aid, they get their schedule cleared, they can pay their fees and then they can go and grab their books,” Moss said. “Everything will be in one convenient location. All of those process, as far as student services will be under one roof. ”

The bookstore is the first area to be completely finished in the new Student Center building at Wallace, and students are taking notice of the changes.

“It’s been expanded so it’s not as cluttered as it was. It used to be a long line by the administration office, not only that, they did bring in new materials,” Kalissa Hampton, Psychology student at Wallace said. “[Items like] health and beauty, the sweets and drinks and books you can purchase to read on your own, outside of school, so they expanded a lot.”

Hampton said she and other students were notified of the new bookstore via the school’s email.

“Either you’ve seen it, they sent it to you in your email, you’ve seen it on the bulletins, but it just opened not too long ago, a lot of people really don’t recognize it,” she said.

Nursing students, Brittney Snow and Wantikka Ware were two of several students standing in line to sell their books back to the bookstore Wednesday, and said that they have really enjoyed the addition of the school’s new bookstore.

“It’s bigger and better. It looks more like a college bookstore now,” Snow said.

“Before it was small, this is more collegey,” Ware added.

“I’ve seen a lot of people in here selling books,” Hampton said. “But they’re also opening up a new student lounge, so it will probably be one of the places people will be during their free time. A lot of people seem excited about it, I hear them talking about it a lot.”