It’s that time of year again, when thousands of students scatter to the book stores on a mission to buy the books they need.

Pamela Mills, store manager at the University Bookstore on the ground floor of the Memorial Union, said lines at the store’s 22 registers are about three minutes long before 10 a.m. The store’s peak times are between 10:45 a.m. and 2:45 p.m., when the lines are 20 to 25 minutes long.

To deal with the heavy flow of customers, the store hires 40 to 50 extra employees at the beginning of August, Mills said.

“We get busier and busier every day,” she added.

It’s the same story at the Campus Bookstore at 2300 Lincoln Way.

The store’s manager, Floyd Ballein, said this week is always busy.

One of the challenges the store faces is making sure it doesn’t have to send a large amount of textbooks back to the company. To help cut down on the number of unsold books, the store consults professors before making purchases, Mills said.

“Our goal is to have one copy of each required and reserved textbook left over from each class,” Mills said. “It is very expensive to send books back or to have to reorder.”

Mills said this year has been especially troublesome.

“This year we have had more orders this week than any other time in the past,” Mills said.

Even when everything is ordered, the status of books can still be unpredictable.

“With over 3,000 books in the store, there is always something out of stock,” Mills said.