Long Overdue: Why Public Libraries are Finally Eliminating the Late-Return Jine.

Slate ^ | February 2017 | Ruth Graham

[nickcarraway]

In 1906, a reporter for the Detroit Free Press described a scene that had become all too common at the city’s public libraries. A child hands an overdue book to a stern librarian perched behind a desk, and with a “sinister expression,” the librarian demands payment of a late fine. In some cases, the child grumbles and pays the penny or two. But in others—often at the city’s smaller, poorer library branches—the offender cannot pay, and his borrowing privileges are revoked. “Scarcely a day passes but it does not leave its record of tears and sighs and vain regrets in little hearts,” the reporter lamented.

More than a century later, similar dramas are still enacted in libraries across the country every day. In some districts, up to 35 percent of patrons have had their borrowing privileges revoked because of unpaid fines. Only these days, it’s librarians themselves who often lament what the Detroit reporter called “a tragedy enacted in this little court of equity.” Now some libraries are deciding that the money isn’t worth the hassle—not only that, but that fining patrons works against everything that public libraries ought to stand for.

Library fines in most places remain quaintly low, sometimes just 10 cents per day. But one user’s nominal is another’s exorbitant. If a child checks out 10 picture books, the kind of haul librarians love to encourage, and then his mother’s work schedule prevents her from returning them for a week past the due date, that’s $7. For middle-class patrons, that may feel like a slap on the wrist, or even a feel-good donation. For low-income users, however, it can be a prohibitively expensive penalty. With unpredictable costs hovering over each checkout, too many families decide it’s safer not to use the library at all. As one California

[Freee-dame]

My library system is terrific. Books and and audio books can be reserved via internet. Most can be renewed twice, also online, for a total of nine weeks. The small fines for being overdue just keep people from being careless about returning things. The same people who do not return grocery store carts to parking lot kiosks might think nothing of simply not returning books if there were no fine.

[T-Bone Texan]

True: Libraries have become a place for bums and ex-prisoners to get comfy and surf for pr0n.

I did not feel like my daughter was safe there.

It is obvious that the bums and their pr0n come before families and children.

I complained once. I was told there was nothing they could do.

Thus, the public library is dead to me. I and my people have been fully disenfranchised from it.

We just get to pay for it. That there is a crime.

[minnesota_bound]

A million books available for you, well 53,000 free ebooks.
http://www.gutenberg.org

[minnesota_bound]

#25 You hanged the book thief? ! : )

[TXBlair]

LOL!! I’ll bet that guy never again accrues another late fee in his life!