When Jack Goldman came to Cornell University as a graduate student, the country was in the middle of the Vietnam War and debate about the conflict raged at home. He opened an anti-war printing press in Collegetown, where the ABC Café is today.

Several years later, in 1975, having never returned to graduate school and thinking of his earlier experience working in bookstores, he decided to open The Bookery I, a used bookstore.

After another five years, he also opened The Bookery II, a companion store selling new books. It grew into one of the largest independent bookstores in the region.

But they’re far from the only bookstores in town. A flip through the yellow pages will come up with 15 total bookstores in the Ithaca area, eight of them used bookstores.

“A lot of people moved to Ithaca back in the ’60s and ’70s when it was a very cool thing to have a bookstore, work in a bookstore,” said David Graff, an employee at Ithaca Books. “Independent bookstores were basically a real force of American life.”

Local owners and workers at the bookstores said the two colleges in town are a major reason for the many stores.

“It’s a very literate community,” said Joseph Wetmore, owner of Autumn Leaves Used Books. He opened the store when he moved here 13 years ago.

“We find it’s a great book town,” Graff said. “The more bookstores in town, the better, because … it brings bookstore tourism.”

Though Susan Verberg lives in Ithaca and works at the farmer’s market in the summer, she becomes a sort of bookstore tourist in the winter, living in Pittsburgh but making sure to stop at Autumn Leaves whenever she comes to town — about once a month.

Sunday, she was looking through the store’s travel section for a Bill Bryson book — any Bill Bryson book, she said. She likes the bargains at the store; paying half the price is much better than no bargain at all, she said.

Brightly colored hand-painted signs show the variety of genres in the store: Fiction, Drama, Mystery, Cooking, Travel, Health, History. It’s an airy store with wide aisles, low shelves, armchairs and an upstairs café.

“It’s a wide-ranging audience,” said Wetmore. “Everything from kids’ books to academic books.”

Two doors down from Autumn Leaves, separated only by Little Tokyo, sits Ithaca Books. High shelves line the aisles, and carts overflowing with books crowd the front of the store. Comfortably worn chairs occupy the quiet corners. Signs admonish, “Please return books to original place on shelf,” and in the theology section, an awkwardly placed label with the cryptic command, “Please return books to CHRISTIANITY.”

“We have a distinctly sort of academic type of appeal,” Graff said. Of course, the used bookstores are not the only game in town for bibliophiles. Barnes & Noble and Borders both beckon with corner cafes and the newest best-sellers.

Used bookstore owners say their businesses have not been affected severely by the arrival of the chains four years ago.

“Having new and used bookstores in a community is sort of a win-win situation,” Graff said. “People are really here to find different things.”

Claire Gleitman, associate professor and chair of the English department, said people choose different bookstores for different purposes.

“People may go to Borders for convenience ... but to The Bookery to browse, linger and talk with the staff about what to purchase,” she said.

But for The Bookery II, the only independent bookstore selling new books left, the arrival of the chain stores has been a drain on business.

In large part because of the competition brought on by the chain stores and by Amazon.com, The Bookery II will close in a few months.

“It’s very sad. It’s another comment on how the culture is changing in favor of the larger corporations,” Goldman said.

Goldman said there were two other independent bookstores in town when he first opened The Bookery II, but they have since closed. It’s part of a larger trend nationwide, he said.

“At the time I began an independent bookstore, independent bookstores as a sector of the book market accounted for close to 30 percent of the entire market throughout the country,” he said. “And now they account for less than 10 percent.”

Locally owned bookstores are a crucial part of town’s character, Graff said.

“What contributes more to a community, a bookstore that’s locally owned or one that’s owned by a group of investors?” he said.

And many of the bookstores are active locally — The Bookery hosts local writers, and Ithaca Books works with a local program, Prisoner Express, that brings used books to prisoners.

Goldman expressed hope that local bookstores would survive.

“The bookstores in Ithaca have always had personality, and reflect on the individuals who own them and the employees who work in them,” he said. “That’s what was always wonderful.”