Insomniac Librarians Why sleep when there's field literature?

Librarians of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your petty cash!

Ditch your fines.

Seriously.

Something I wanted to test when I came into my evil duhrectorship was whether fines were worth it or no.

After a couple months and literally a couple of dollars, I picked no.

I had come from an Evil City Library that used to have incredibly stringent fine policies. Library staff were threatened bodily on more than one occasion over pennies. I forgave a woman whose house had burned to the ground taking her books with it, much to the chagrin of manughmint (and indeed to a lot of DL pats on the back.) Don't get me wrong, I was a stickler to those I thought could afford to pay their share, and even the boss had to relent that I was "firm but fair".

But for all of those fights over .50, I caught myself wondering.

If we're truly a non profit, why are we charging these in the first place?

If information is striving to be free, why voluntarily assign it a cost?

Does any Library anywhere break even from the fines that it charges?

If people were left to their own devices, would they still donate and return books at a similar rate?

When I up and replanted to Squeaky Clean Massachusetts, where once again, the grass truly is greener, there was a law on the books.

And yea, it was a cool law, and it said:

http://www.mass.gov/legis/laws/mgl/78-19b.htm

And I took subsection 2 to heart bigtime.

While the letter of the interpretation of the law is clear that folks can charge for stuff if they feel like it and certainly charge fines, the spirit seems rather clear that equity of access is what we're looking to get to.

Why not be in accord with the spirit of the law, too?

So, when I was first at my Library, I did a little experiment. I took the first 3 months I was there and kept track of how much in fines we received for what I would call middle of the road enforcement. That tally was in the neighbourhood of $3. I shook me head at it.

I already had 2 very cool progressive policies in place when I got there. Copies were free to 10 pages and kids didn't get charged late fees.

But that made me wonder.

If this whole great experiment works when kids don't get charged, why not expand that to adults?

With the $1 a month tally in mind, I became very lax in terms of fines.

And folks came in.

And folks checked stuff out.

And folks sheepishly admitted that they had an item charged out since 1986 and that they were scared to use the Library but had heard from their cousin's uncle's sister's roommate that the Librarian just wanted the books back.

And yea, it was good.

Yes, there are outstanding materials, and I do believe that we've probably got more of these than the Fine Sticklers, but if we phone, they do show up. The Library is about lending things out and eventually getting them back. The very popular books will develop a holds list and result in immediate recall anyway; the unpopular books are now being stored in a Patron's house instead of on your shelves. If something's not being used in Library, but might be used at home, I count that as better.

But the whole system worked better than I thought it would.

You're taught not to solicit based on guilt if you take a fundraising course or talk to folks that fundraise. Guilt is a good motivator, but the person that gives remembers that they were made to feel guilty and is hesitant down the road when you want them to give again.

Since I wasn't actually pestering anyone, I was absolved of this guilt feedback loop.

Folks that brought in really late items were politely informed that they didn't really have to pay right now if they couldn't manage it or had forgotten their wallets or what have you.

For every person that skated on by (and I would submit that those folks by and large didn't have the means to worry over Library fines) another person or 3 would whip out a ten dollar bill and say that they felt horrible about having something too long.

A lot of that windfall aligned with the Annual Drive. The Staff didn't remember that So and So owed us fine money back in March and didn't pony up, BUT the Patrons did. Some of our donations were quite sizable and were accompanied by little notes like "Thanks for letting me slide!". Thanks indeed.

I felt vindicated when I attended a Regional Workshop a couple years into things on PR. The fellow giving the talk was an old newspaper hound. When he posited that Libraries should just stop charging for late items and copies, I countered with an "Already do." He was floored. Being a newspaper guy, he pressed me. So I told em it was actual policy to not charge kids' fines and pretty much my standard operating procedure to be lax on adults.

That's when he said something like this. If you stick people for an overdue fine, it's a fine. It's meant to go directly to the town treasurer without passing go. BUT, if someone gives you a donation instead of a fine, that can head straight for the Trustee coffers.

He understood. It was awesome. And he had thought of another good argument for not charging fees in the first place.

This will work at a larger level, never you fear. When I worked the branches of the Evil City Library, I saw just that with my very own beady little eyes. Being non confrontational with the Patrons in the fine department wasn't only keeping me safe from the Patrons that packed, it was earning the branches a lot of "Keep the change"s. And it means a lot more when you phone the same people and ask them to return their overdue items.

Late fees are a penalty for use. They are equivalent to you saying that you don't want a Patron to use the Library. I know they're meant to say "Hey! Bring this back on time!" but they don't. They say "Don't come here!". Ridding yourself of them lets you do wacky things like take in about $4,500 in donations in a month in a small town because you've built the capital where it counts.

If folks are overdue because they've got better things to do than worry over when their books are due back, then chances are they're probably working hard. They're either scraping by, in which case charging isn't the best thing from a social perspective; you're essentially banning the working poor from the Library the second they slip up. OR suppose someone has totally lost track of time. They're lawyers buried under casework. They're doctors seeing patients. Or they're trust fund folks that don't give a fig what day of the week it is. While it's tempting to some to stick it to the wealthier Patrons, this is a great donor base. When you charge this class a fine, you're telling them don't bother to donate since you've already paid the exact penalty you have to pay. Freakonomics points out that when folks were charged a nominal rate for keeping their kid longer at daycare, most people just shelled out and forgot about it. Charging fines to people that can afford to pay is the same concept. They no longer feel bad that they've breached etiquette and inconvenienced another person by returning the item late. *Remove* the hard and fast fine from the equation, and suddenly the twin realisations that someone else was waiting for that and that the penalty for an overdue item ought be equivalent to how squirmy they feel at that breech in etiquette come into play.

We _want_ people to feel connected to one another. We _want_ people to come to us regardless of class. We _want_ people to learn whatever they want whenever they want to. Strict fines run counter to all of these aims.

So quit em cold turkey.