Why do libraries charge fines? Fines are a source of revenue, a chance to teach responsibility to our youngest patrons, and a way to encourage people to bring materials back on time.
Or are they?
What if it turned out that none of those assumptions were true? A new white paper (Https://goo.gl/rbwStj) looks at the available data and concludes that fines do not do any of those things, although librarians and patrons have deeply held beliefs that they do.
At Eliminating Fines and Fees on Children’s Materials to Create a Win-Win for Your Community, my mind was blown by a study which showed that nominal library fees do not have ANY impact on overdue rates. Only steep fines result in more prompt return of material. Unless your library is willing to charge $5 a day on overdue picture books, the fines are not resulting in the timely return of your materials.
To all this, the researcher’s own work showed that fines are also the number one barrier to use of the library for low-income families. The white paper concluded that ideally, all libraries would eliminate all late fees, but recommended most strongly that Children’s Libraries:
1. Eliminate fees on late children’s materials.
2. Eliminate fees on damaged items for less expensive children’s materials, such as board books.
3. Eliminate or create flexible policies for damaged fees on more expensive children’s materials, like picture books.
When put into action in the High Plains Library District in CO, eliminating late fees was found to be revenue neutral, while increasing circulation of children’s materials across the board. They saw a 4% increase in children’s media circulation, 8% increase in juvenile material circulation, and 16% increase in picture book circulation. Removing barriers to access and increasing circulation at the same time? Sounds like a win-win to me!