One in 8700

As she walked down Main St. in Middlebury during a lunch break four years ago, Barbara Harding saw a ‘For Sale’ sign in the window of Otter Creek Used Books. She opened the door, walked down the wide stairs and immediately began negotiating a price. Within the month, the store was hers.



“I knew it was part of my life journey,” she said.

For the next year, Harding kept her job as marketing director of the Addison County Chamber of Commerce, all the while working to truly make the store hers.

“It has been a slow process, but I’ve been pretty careful,” said Harding. “I did it in stages to make it ‘me,’ to offer a quality experience.”

Harding faced two primary hurdles. The first, capital, is a struggle for every used bookstore. Simply put, it is always low, she said. The second was more subtle. The previous owner had run the business down, and Harding wanted to re-brand the store, to reinvigorate it and make it her own. Otter Creek Used Books never closed during the change of ownership, which is something Harding sometimes regrets. But, she said, “by now the community recognizes that someone new is running [the store].”

Yet this second task is never quite complete. For the last three years, Harding has worked in the store full-time. Artwork, much of it created by Harding from battered old books, adorns the space. Folded paper flowers sit in a vase in the front window. A small cabinet from a store in Burlington is repainted and lined with the pages of old books. Behind the counter, another cabinet is filled with the works of a local artist Harding connected with during the Middlebury Arts Walk. Tucked away below that cabinet are more of Harding’s creations: paper cutouts sandwiched in plain glass and wrapped in twine.

“It gets the art that is in me out,” she said.

Gazing at one of her cutouts Harding laughed.

“People would probably think I’m crazy if they came down here and saw me cutting up books,” she said. “But I give them new life. I love doing that.”

In the back, there is a box overflowing with those old books. Harding will give them to anyone with a project in mind. Occasionally a local artist will bring by a print featuring pages from those books.
Used books hold a special allure for Harding.

“I love the books, to hold them, to use them, to know that someone else enjoyed them,” she said. When she and her husband Rusty travel, they go to all the used bookstores in a community. Often, Harding would frequent the used bookstore north of town on Route 7.

“They were probably sad when I bought this place,” she said. “I don’t go there as much now.”

Despite any notions to the contrary, Harding said she has no underlying theme to her store.

“A lot of bookstores have a specialty,” she said. “I don’t. I’m eclectic.” The books Harding sells seem to simply find themselves at her store. Harding grew up in the area, so people bring books in to her, “either because they recognize what I’m doing, or they’re simply cleaning.”

Perhaps the best illustration of the former motive is a woman who walked into the store with a big bag of books. She set them on the counter and said, ‘I’m done with these.’

“She’d brought back the books she’d bought from me,” said Harding. “That’s how supportive the community is.”

This sense of community is something Harding strives to maintain. Classical music plays quietly in the store, and once a woman told her that the music playing was haunting.

“I tried really hard to play music that didn’t seem haunting. Tried some Cat Stevens … I don’t know if that woman ever even came back.”

She is not upset by the episode, but it highlights one of Harding’s highest priorities: she wants the store to be a unique experience.

One of her favorite memories is of two girls sitting in the children’s section reading books to each other. It is moments like that, she said, that make the whole endeavor rewarding. Buying the store was not a decision she and Rusty took lightly, but it has been worth the risk.

“‘Trust the universe,’ my friend says, and I did, and everything so far has worked out,” said Harding.