An absolute disgrace and an embarrassment. A bookstore with hardly any books. The first floor: all the McGill paraphernalia and regalia you'd never need and didn't even imagine existed. Stupid over-priced t-shirts and other assorted crap that they try to get parents to buy for their kids. All that's missing is McGill toilet paper (now THAT I'd actually buy). So no books on the first floor (although they used to have magazines there). The second floor has a computer store and a coffee shop with the remaining third of the floor devoted to real, actual books: fiction, philosophy, sociology, etc. But the funny thing is that several years ago they actually stopped stocking books so now they disguise the empty bookshelves by placing the books covers facing out on the shelves. If you actually place the books the way they're supposed to lie on a shelf, they'd have about a quarter left. Finally, the third floor has some books but mostly uesless text and reference books. So there you go.
Word on the street is that the evil head librarian at McGill brought in her inexperience husband to run the show at the book store some years ago and he's been running it into the ground ever since. It's the same corporate bottom line mentality that's rife through all of McGill. Logic: You don't make money selling books. You make money selling souvenirs. So why bother with the books? Um, I don't know because maybe you're a university that's supposed to be a center for learning? So less books, more McGill crap, and a coffee shop that isn't even open in the summer anymore although tons of students, faculty and researchers are still around. The only reason I go is the twice a year clearance of books in which they get rid of more and more of their dwindling stock at cut rate prices. But I'm sure even that well will soon run dry as McGill University Bookstore eventually meets its aspirations of becoming the first bookless bookstore.