World at Your Fingertips : Travel: Maps, accessories and thousands of titles make the Traveler’s Bookcase a de rigeur stopping point for Los Angeles’ inveterate globetrotters.

After 22 years of roaming the world, Santa Monica investor Maurice Bretzfield can claim a fair share of experiences, from watching sunsets at an ancient castle in Jaipur, India, to camping high in the Himalayas with a group of Sherpas to crossing by foot into China under the stony gaze of armed border guards.

Yet for Bretzfield and others like him, each new journey is prefaced by a trip to the Traveler’s Bookcase, a bookstore on 3rd Street in the Beverly-Fairfax district that specializes in all things having to do with not staying at home.

With maps, travel accessories and more than 10,000 books ranging from country guides to travel literature to quality fiction, the 2-year-old Traveler’s Bookcase is both an homage to wanderlust and a de rigeur stopping point for Los Angeles’ inveterate travelers.

“You can travel the world without leaving the store,” said Bretzfield, 46, who typically spends about six months a year on the road. “The place is almost an adventure unto itself.”

Begun by lifelong friends Harriet Bay and Priscilla Ulene, Traveler’s Bookcase is an example of a private passion gone public. Bay and Ulene are extensive travelers who both left successful careers--Bay as an educational consultant and Ulene as a television and video producer--to start the business.

Though there are about 75 travel bookstores nationwide, Westside travelers previously had to trek to specialty shops in Pasadena or Toluca Lake if they wanted to venture beyond the standard Fodor’s and Frommer’s fare found in general bookstores.

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“We wanted to introduce people to things they didn’t know existed,” said Ulene, who has trekked across New Zealand and spent vacations in New Guinea with her husband, Art, a health-care commentator for ABC. “We wanted to be a community resource.”

Consequently, Traveler’s Bookcase provides an array of services for its customers. In addition to the usual travel accessories such as alarm clocks, lightweight luggage and electric converters, customers can leaf through bound back-issues of travel magazines as well as have their passport photos snapped. For those too busy to stop in and wade through the selection, Bay and Ulene will fax bibliographies of suggested readings pertaining to a specific country or region. Soon, a computer will also be available so customers can input their travel tips as well as read about the experiences of others.

The arrival of Traveler’s Bookcase has coincided with a blossoming during the last decade in travel literature. Though the number of travel titles published yearly has remained fairly constant--there were 468 travel-related books published in 1992, according to Publishers Weekly--the quality and variety of the literature has never been greater. Today, guides cater to adventure travelers, single travelers, those taking trips with children, women traveling alone, and gay and lesbian voyagers. Increasingly, guides come abundantly illustrated with rich color photos and text that emphasizes cultural information, in addition to the best place to get a meal.

At Traveler’s Bookcase, Bay and Ulene have added another dimension to the selection, including in their stock quality fiction penned by writers from around the world. Such books are grouped with the travel literature so browsers interested in Trinidad, for example, might not only pick up the latest Insight guide but works by V.S. Naipaul as well.

“We thought it was so much a part of travel,” said Bay, whose recent travels include Morocco and Cuba. “It’s not just people and places. It’s how they’re touched by the country they’re in.”

Traveler’s Bookcase also sponsors readings by travel writers. Mary Morris, a Brooklyn-based novelist (“A Mother’s Love”) who has also written travel memoirs, recalls her October reading at Traveler’s Bookcase as being one of the most “delightful, intelligent and electric” presentations she has given, due to the turnout and ambience.

“There was something about having travel literature, suitcases and travel accouterments there that made it more alive,” said Morris, who discussed her anthology, “Maiden Voyages: Writings of Women Travelers.” “It’s very rare that I meet a real traveler who’s also not a real reader.”

Bay and Ulene attribute the passion of travelers for the open road as one of the reasons their bookstore has prospered during a recession and at a time when independent bookstores are struggling to survive. According to Bay, hard times don’t present obstacles to diehard travelers. She recalled one woman who wanted to see a map that showed the portion of the world between Europe and Southeast Asia because she was planning to drive from England to Vietnam. The same woman, said Bay, is now preparing for a five-month drive across Africa.

“It isn’t just rich people who travel,” said Bay. “If you love to travel, you just do it. You don’t stay home.”

Traveler’s Bookcase is at 8375 W. 3rd St., Los Angeles ; (213) 655-0575. The store will host a publication party at 7 p.m. Tuesday for ESCAPE, a new adventure travel magazine.