Robin Gross works on a display near the sports section of Books on the Square yesterday. The store’s new owners plan to continue some popular traditions, including story hours and Thursday pajama parties.

The Providence Journal / Bob Thayer Bob Thayer

PROVIDENCE — At a time when neighborhood bookstores are falling victim to larger chains and discount Internet retailers, why would anyone want to buy one?

The answer, according to Mercedes and Rod Clifton, the new owners of Books on the Square, is simple: their family loves books.

The Barrington couple purchased the Angell Street bookstore, a longtime fixture of the Wayland Square neighborhood, from state receivership late last month.

The purchase price was $51,000, plus the settlement of debt and other expenses.

The previous owners, Sarah and Richard Zacks, placed the business they founded in 1992 into state receivership to resolve a long-standing tax dispute with the City of Providence. The court-appointed receiver, Providence attorney Peter J. Furness, had been seeking a buyer since 2005.

Merc Clifton said she and her husband read about the store’s troubles in the newspaper last summer and thought that buying the business could be a way of combining their interest in books with their desire to find a new business opportunity.

Both are 69, and they have four grandchildren. Rod is a professor of engineering at Brown University, and Merc said that after they raised four children, she wanted a new challenge. Their son Jeffrey will work at Books on the Square, she said, after spending 10 years working at the Providence Public Library.

“It’s interesting, pleasant work,” Merc said in an interview in the store’s basement this week. “We’re just going to give it our best shot.”

It’s not the best of times for small booksellers.

The number of independent bookstores in the United States has fallen dramatically since the rise of large chains, such as Borders, as well as online retailers, such as Amazon.com. Membership in the American Booksellers Association, a national trade group that promotes the interests of independently owned bookstores, has dropped to 1,700 — a 58-percent decline from 4,000 members in 1995, said Avin Mark Domnitz, chief executive officer of the organization.

Independent bookstores now sell only about 10 percent of all books, in terms of revenue, Domnitz said.

Sales in general have been on the decline for all bookstores. April bookstore sales fell by 6 percent from the same month in 2006, the 10th month in a row that book sales were below previous years’ results, according to the American Booksellers Association, which attributed the figures to the Bureau of the Census.

Merc Clifton does not seem daunted. But that may be because the Cliftons say they don’t expect the bookstore business to make them rich.

“We’re not going to become millionaires here,” she said. “But that’s not what this is about.”

“Our expectations aren’t terribly high,” Rod Clifton said. “Our retirement does not rely on this.” Their hope, he said is to break even, or make a “modest” profit.

Neither are coming in with book-selling experience. Besides being a long-time professor, Rod served twice as dean of Brown’s engineering school. He said he specializes in the field of solid mechanics and does research in the mechanical behavior of materials and biological tissues, such as the soft tissue on vocal chords and heart valves.

Merc said that in the 1980s, she and a partner ran a business selling carrying cases for the original Macintosh computer. They contracted with a sewing factory in Fall River to make the cases, which were constructed with fabric and foam, she said.

At one point, Merc said, a competitor suggested to her to outsource the manufacturing overseas as a way of increasing profits. One of those computer cases could be made for “a bowl of rice,” the competitor advised. She said she and her partner never pursued that strategy, partly because they felt some responsibility to the local community. “It provided employment,” she said. And the workers here made better-quality bags, she said. Merc and her partner sold that business in 1989, she said, because of health issues.

The Cliftons say they have lots of ideas about what they are going to do with the store that will carry on the traditions established by the Zacks. The new owners asked the store manager and sole full-time employee, Jennifer Doucette, and the rest of the 13 or 14 staffers to stay.

The story hours and the Thursday night pajama parties will remain; the Harry Potter party, planned for next month when the final installment of that series is released, is still on; and dogs are still welcome inside. The staff still stocks dog cookies behind the counter.

The store probably won’t venture into the coffee or pastry business, as some bookstores have done, since there is a Starbucks across the street, and a locally owned café right down the street, Doucette said.

Rod Clifton said they weren’t prepared to talk about the details of their plans, except that they will somehow involve education.

“We’re very interested in learning,” he said. “You will see a strong learning emphasis at Books on the Square.”

tbarmann@projo.com