We all want to get books into the hands of children. We’re librarians, we don’t want to deny children access to materials – no way! But sometimes there are those sneaky overdue fines that build up and build up and then, all of a sudden, a kid doesn’t have access to library materials. That is scary stuff for a kid and will prevent many children from using the library. Earlier this year, we decided to tackle this problem. We considered an amnesty day, a read away your fines program and many other options, but decided in the end to make it easy, ongoing and to do something that would create a positive library experience.<\/p>\n
In July we launched the “Find a Book to Remove Your Fees” program which is all about relationship building. The concept is simple: Kids up to age 17 who visit with a librarian for a personalized book recommendation are eligible to have overdue fees removed from their library cards.*<\/p>\n
In just four months this program has removed barriers for 75 kids! That is 75 more kids taking home books – SEVENTY-FIVE!! That means 75 positive interactions between staff and kids, 75 readers’ advisory interviews, 75 (at least) books checked out and (hopefully) 75 books enjoyed. That is good stuff.<\/p>\n
*The fine print (if you are curious): Charges for lost materials, Quick Picks (adult 7 day books), Quick Flicks (adult 2 day movies) and collection referral are not removed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We all want to get books into the hands of children. We’re librarians, we don’t want to deny children access to materials – no way! But sometimes there are those sneaky overdue fines that build up and build up and then, all of a sudden, a kid doesn’t have access to library materials. That is scary stuff for a kid and will prevent many children from using the library. Earlier this year, we decided to tackle this problem. We considered an amnesty day, a read away your fines program and many other options, but decided in the end to make it easy, ongoing and to do something that would create a positive library experience. In July we launched the “Find a Book to Remove Your Fees” program which is all about relationship building. The concept is simple: Kids up to age 17 who visit with a librarian for a personalized…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":141,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":"","_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4857","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogger-heather-acerro"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4857","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/141"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4857"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4857\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}