Bear Pond Books: Defending Reader Privacy

Since 1973, Bear Pond Books has been selling books and creating a sense of community in downtown Montpelier, Vermont. The store has brought dozens of well-known authors to the store and took a well-publicized, defiant stand protecting the privacy rights of its customers in the face of the USA Patriot Act. The 3,200-square-foot store, the second location in the store's 33-year tenure, was founded by Michael Katzenberg, and is now owned and run by Katzenberg and his spouse, Linda Prescott.

Montpelier, with a population of under 10,000, the nation's smallest capital city, may not be plagued by many of the woes of urban life, but it and Bear Pond Books have not been spared adversity.

According to Katzenberg, the store was vandalized during the busy holiday season of 1988, and through concerted community efforts, was "put back together." There have been ruinous floods, including the "One Hundred Year Flood of 1992," when an ice jam on the Winooski River caused water levels to rise four to six feet.

"Many thousands of dollars in inventory were lost," Katzenberg told BTW. "We were already severely overcrowded and planned to move out of the store. We had taken out a lease on the building across the street [the current location], when the flood hit." Again the community pitched in -- residents brought in hot soup for the staff, helped inventory the waterlogged books and shelve new ones in the new location.

In 2002, concerned about Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act -- which vastly expanded the FBI's authority to search business records, including the records of bookstores and libraries -- Katzenberg took action. "As of January 24, 2003, all titles listed in Readers' Club accounts were deleted from our computer. We updated the software so that only the amount of the sales is kept as a record of purchases," he explained. (To read a column that Katzenberg wrote for BTW regarding his decision to purge his database to protect his customers' privacy, click here.)

At the time, Katzenberg released a statement saying in part, "We share the concern of all Americans about the need for national security, but we do not believe that the repression of civil rights allowed under the Patriot Act will either ensure our national security or combat international terrorism."

Katzenberg told BTW that he "was astonished" by the attention the decision received in the media. "We received responses from all over the world," he reported. "We received hundreds of e-mails, more than I could handle. I was just doing what I thought needed to be done." (The USA Patriot Act was reauthorized in March 2006, and though some improvements were made to Section 215 -- in large part due to the efforts of Rep. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), and booksellers, librarians, and publishers through the Campaign for Reader Privacy campaign -- the section still does not narrow the FBI's search authority to the records of suspected terrorists.)

And while Vermont may be the home of reader privacy advocates, it also home to moose, mountains, and Ben & Jerry's, as well as a host of renowned writers who enjoy making appearances at Bear Pond. The list includes: Grace Paley, Howard Norman, Katherine Patterson, and Chris Bohjalian. Bear Pond also hosts readings by many authors on national tours, or provides the books for events at larger venues. In October alone, the store is involved with visits from John Dean, David McPhail, Amy and David Goodman, Peter Behrens, and Jan Brett, among others.

Customers can keep track of the many events through Bear Pond's BookSense.com web site. "We have listings, pictures of our staff, staff recommendations," Katzenberg told BTW. "It gives us a presence on the Web." Bear Pond also prominently displays Book Sense Picks on a table near the store entrance where customers can easily peruse them. Book Sense gift cards are also available, and Katzenberg has found that "they are a lot simpler to use than other types of certificates."

Katzenberg recalled his roots in bookselling. "I always wanted to work in a bookstore but no one would give me a job," he said with a laugh. "It wasn't easy starting out -- for a time we sold smoking pipes. Then at the old store, it became so crowded that before ordering a book, I'd have to consider if we would be able to fit it on a shelf." --Nomi Schwartz