I think what's being missed in the discussion on HN is the reason CPL eliminated fines. It's not about the money, nor is it about getting the books back. It's to improve access to the library system.
CPL did a study of who held the cards with suspended privileges because of late fees, and found out that the vast majority were people in poor neighborhoods, and of those the vast majority were children.
Now with the new rules it opens up book borrowing again to tens of thousands of people who need it most.
Oh yeah, that once was a big problem for me when I was something like 9 years old. I was using library a lot and one day I lost the book. And there were fines for that and for late return as well. I didn't tell my parents because we didn't have a lot of money, so that would be a problem. I saved my lunch money etc for two months and then went to the library to solve the problem. They were pretty nice about it and let me to replace the book with cheap another one, which I bought right outside the library, so even didn't spend all the money I saved. Seems funny now, but it was a major source of anxiety for me back then :)
This seems like an excellent move on the part of the library system and mayor's office. I don't have a horse in this race (no late books in a long time) but it's great to see this being implemented for everybody's benefit.
Even if you return all your books on time, it's still valuable, because of the huge jump they're seeing in the rate at which books are returned.
Random anecdote: About 15 years ago, I was looking for a somewhat obscure book, and found that it was something like 6 months overdue. Later on, while hanging out with a friend, I mentioned this to a friend who had a common interest in the subject matter, with some comment to the effect of, "What happened there!?"
Well, this friend went over to his bookshelf, picked a book off the shelf, and handed it to me. It was the very same 6 month overdue book I had been looking for. He explained that he had lost it somewhere, and, by the time he had found it, the fines were already up to something like $50, which he couldn't afford, and he wasn't done reading it yet, so he figured he might as well keep it since it was the last library book he'd ever be checking out.
IIRC the statistic quoted when CPL announced this program suggests that some version of that story was playing out for thousands and thousands of books every year. Which negatively affects access to information for everyone in the city, not just the people who were getting slapped with fines.
So, I'm curious. Did they require that the books be returned in order to open up borrowing again?
Like, just, "please bring the books back, we'll disappear the fees and just take 'em back and all is forgiven"? Or did they just... reactivate the accounts and hope that history won't repeat?
(Genuinely curious -- the articles I've read on the subject, like this one, are all excited about more library everything, but quite light on real info)
My understanding is they just wiped the slate clean. Returning the missing material was not required. But that's based on a radio report I don't remember well, so I could be wrong.
If you lose the book, you can replace it with another copy in good condition.
The policy used to be that you had to pay whatever the library paid for it, which could be quite a penny if they bought one of the library editions. Now a $7 trade paperback will do.
Interesting. I noted below that the libraries could work with the post office to get books back efficiently, but based on this they should probably start with school libraries instead.
The "library" in my school (sub 13 years old, the library was a few bookcases at best for a school of ~120 kids) had books from the central library in the town. You could look up a book, reserve it and it would be delivered next week if available (no internet then, so it was a computer with the book list and reservation cards you had to fill in). If it was not available you would get a notice when it would arrive.
Or you took your bike and drove the 5km but as a small kid that is not always an option and you'd have to get your parents to bring or help you get there. You could return all books there even if you picked them up elsewhere in the same library system. It's sort of a postal system I guess.
It didn't get used too often, but it was a nice addition to the rotating book supply that was otherwise available. And it was also a nice learning experience for us small kids about how the libraries worked and we got to use computers.
The Santa Cruz (California) City/County Public Library System didn't apply late fees to junior cards as of 15-20 years ago. In all likelihood they still don't.
Being young means you're less likely to be totally responsible yet. Being poor means you're less likely to have parents that are 100% engaged in your library visits.
Small fines seem like a great way to instill a sense of responsibility (while also acting as insurance style payments), especially if your parents already aren't engaged and ensuring you're responsible to duties.
As this the Good Will Hunting quote suggests, in many libraries these fees were small, $1.25 in late fees for a Harvard Education...
Sure, they seem like that. But the study Chicago conducted showed that fines increased patron anxiety and were antithetical to the intended goals of library leadership in engaging their patrons.
So it actually may have actually been detrimental.
Poor people are sometimes forgetful as well. I forgot to return library books many times as an ADHD kid but the small fine was irrelevant to my blue-collar, "you need to go to university someday" parents.
Please have some empathy for poor children and children with unengaged parents and stop supporting punishing them for their failings by removing access to one of the things that might get them out of their position.
What is your point? Of course we all understand that being poor doesn't (directly) mean you can't return books. I could write a whole essay about how being poor could indirectly make it harder to return books (less free time from working, less access to easy transportation, etc) but that's not really a point worth making, and I don't think it would change your mind on...whatever it is you're trying to bring up.
What exactly is your point though? Just curious here. That the library directors made a mistake? That OP's point about library card suspension being correlated to income doesn't mean it's causation? Where were you trying to push the conversation here?
My point is that I don't understand why the GP brought up the poor, which are kind of a wild card ("won't someone think of the poor???"), when they are perfectly capable of returning books in time.
Oh, this is an easy one! I hope GP doesn't mind me handling this one for him.
GP was bringing some additional clarity to the content of the article and the discussion about it. See the Chicago public library had conducted a study and found that by eliminating late fees, they'd increase traffic and usage of the library system. See they found that poor people and children were less likely to engage the library system once they'd begun accruing fines. The city felt this was a negative, and to address it they changed their policy.
Again, of course they're capable of returning things on time. But the city had found that 1-the fines weren't needed to keep the libraries functioning. 2- the fines had a greater impact on the poor than other patrons, which feels bad.
The poor and their usage behaviors were part of the decision making process, and knowing this may inform the discussion. It's extremely relevant.
Being rich enables you to return books as late as you want because the fine means little to you, and certainly not whether you can eat or pay the rent.
People aren't perfect, they make mistakes. The difference is that a well off person can afford to correct that mistake by paying the fine, while a poor person is given an incentive to not do so because they can't afford it.
The public libraries in Ireland decided to eliminate fines early this year and it seems to have had the opposite effect. In some cases, people don’t seem to return books at all. I’d placed a hold on a book, a couple of months ago and it looks like the people who’d borrowed the only two copies of the book in the system haven’t returned it in over 8 months now.
I‘d initially thought that eliminating fines was a great idea, but since then I’ve changed my opinions on it.
Perhaps a better way to go about it would be to have a month (or 3 months) long jubilee when people could return the books they haven’t returned in years without any penalties and then switch over to a more reasonable and less punitive fine structure. Having zero fines implies that there will always be people who exploit the system. Lower but non-zero fines will be closer to the optima, IMO.
I don't think you're correct here. In my own (anecdotal) exerience it seems to me that returns are up. In fairness books got lost or borrowers failed to return them before the change to abolish fines as well.
Did you speak to a member of staff and ask for a replacement book to be purchased?
I did speak to one of the librarians at my local library and I'll be writing them a letter detailing my suggestions, soon. Based on the comments here, I suspect a decent middle ground of a solution would be to not lend books to people who have books overdue. That'd probably fly better than re-introducing fines.
The public library system here Ireland is by far the best I've seen, and it's a bit discouraging to see people exploit a public good.
In fairness, I don't think the article proves much for the system either. A single month of data, when there is pent up demand for people to return books and a publicity campaign, virtually guarantees this month will be very different from all the others.
In reality, that might be the case here as well. All the OP article is saying is that there was a ~2.5 increase in returns just after the penalties were eliminated. That might be 2.5x a very small number, and it might also come with a longer term increase in book theft.
I honestly think it is the novelty of suddenly not having fines rather than the actual not having of fines. IMHO (most) people don’t not return books when they’re a day or a week late because of fines.
Ultimately, I believe it’s too early to draw any conclusions beyond observing the number of books returned for now. It will certainly be interesting to see where the steady state will wind up, though.
All this is fair, but, at the same time, Chicago is far from the first library system to do this. It's just the largest. And it seems quite likely that it'll work out in Chicago the same way it has elsewhere. Other libraries are seeing that the benefits last.
You're maybe minimizing what the fines can amount to. As a parent of small children, I can say from experience that a load of books from the children's library, left forgotten for a week, is around $10 in fines, which is a pretty penny for a lot of folks. And if you're a busy parent and the nearest branch isn't too easy to get to - I used to live about 1/2 hour away from the nearest branch (Sulzer) - having a week or two go by before you can reasonably make it to the library is not at all unrealistic.
> I used to live about 1/2 hour away from the nearest branch (Sulzer)
There are 81 branch libraries and you can return a book to any of them (you also can have your book reservations delivered to any branch as well).
Sulzer has something like 5 branches within a 3 miles radius. As you get to the edges of the city, the number of nearby branches decreases (as you would expect). If you have no car and have to pay individually for bus rides, this starts to appear quite burdensome. Actually, having a car might not help so much because few branches have free parking lots.
I frequently drop books off for my kids because I work downtown and can head over at lunch (there is a place to get good cubano sandwiches across the street, so big bonus!). I doubt many people on the south and west sides have that luxury.
My local public library recently eliminated fines for children's books acknowledging that a fine for a large pile of kids books could seem overwhelming.
With us the kids have their own account and they don't pay any late fees, only if the book is completely lost. Offcourse it helps that all public schools have a branch of the state library so they can return books by themselves.
Agreed that more data is required to draw any sort of conclusion from this.
That said, my understanding of behavioral therapy is that you reward desired behaviors and ignore unwanted behaviors. Punishment is also on the table for flagrant violation of the rules, but it needs to be applied equally and immediately.
With that in mind, how does the library system reward good actors -- those that return books on-time, that sort of thing? It's really hard to shape behavior when you have a surplus of sticks and a notable lack of carrots.
I wonder if you can redefine the problem to not have a "good actor" distinction. For instance, instead of the normal term-based borrowing, say that every taxpayer gets, say, 10 books at a time, funded by the state (to promote education/culture/whatever). You can swap out those books as often as you want. You can also hold onto those books as long as you want. If they come back damaged or you lose them, they continue to count against your quota (possibly subject to a jubilee mechanism). At no point do you owe anyone anything. Also, the library is under no obligation to buy unbounded copies of any single book: they can have a hold system for popular new releases just like we do now. Only books the library can reasonably acquire more copies of (i.e., in print or public domain) are in this system; rare books maybe follow the current system or maybe aren't loanable.
People who are heavy library users aren't affected by this, they can do what they've been doing. People who want to hold onto a book for years can do that too (and the library might decide to buy more copies), but they're no longer exhibiting bad behavior and there's no reason to disincentivize them.
it doesn't have to be funded by the state. you can just "buy" a book off the library. in fact, you could buy the book in a book shop, and the library becomes a swapping center.
as long as you bring back books in good condition, and they are in the library catalogue. (the library may not want to take multiple copies of books that are unpopular)
of course paying for books up front does affect low income families and users who need many books at once.
another side effect of these models is that you can swap books with your friends.
you get 10 books, and i get a different 10 books and we swap with each other until we are through all 20 books together, and then each of us brings any 10 books back.
Public bookshelf is something that starts to pop up here and there. They are sometimes outdoors, accessible at any time or at the entrance of supermarkets. You take a book that looks interesting, read it and return later. Or just swap with some other book you own. Sometimes there are someone that takes care of the shelf, swapping content from other shelves further away. I often find interesting stuff in our local ones.
now that you mention it, my brother is actually managing one or more of those. that means, from time to time he checks if anything not suitable for minors sneaks in there, or throws out stuff that is badly damaged and not worth keeping.
One thought would be to take a page from airlines and institute the equivalent of status tiers. For example, returning books on time gets you further towards the front of the line when waiting for items on-hold and earlier access to new releases.
Or perhaps just more concurrently checked out books. Increase your maximum books for good behavior, decrease it for bad behavior (perhaps minimum of 3 books, maximum of 50 or something like that). Also, show the current no-late steak when checking out books and perhaps publicly display a list of everyone who has a perfect record for a period of time.
Also, as for the stick, perhaps temporary suspensions for consistent bad behavior would work.
My library (which does still have late fees) does this.
You can get 5 books at a time, initially, and you can keep them for 21 days, and you can renew by phone once per book (so long as they're not on reserve for someone else).
If you have had your card for >90 days, and have borrowed and returned >10 books, you instead are allowed 20 books at a time (no more than 5 per topic/category), and can renew twice before returning. But if you run up too many fees, you go back to the 5-book-limit.
> With that in mind, how does the library system reward good actors -- those that return books on-time, that sort of thing?
A reward of an increase in their simultaneous loan allowance might be warmly received perhaps, whilst not actually taken advantage of to any detrimental extent.
For most people there is no penalty besides after a long period of time of and money spent by your landlord, eventually you'll get forcibly evicted, and they might even pay you to do leave before then.
People squat on apartments all the time. Some people go from home to home never paying rent, and never see a real punishment for it.
But it's unethical, and against social norms.
Just like keeping books forever (stealing) just because there's no late fee.
Also safety nets for poor are begrudged because they are funded by Government taxes but safety nets for the rich are welcomed because they are funded by banks, and money of depositors and investors, since individuals who bail you out can (expected value) personally do better inside the bank than individuals who foreclose and help the bank (eg Trump’s bailouts after Taj Mahal etc.)
I'm having a bit of trouble determining if that was a reply to my comment.
My only point was that if things are optional to pay for, lots of people will take the thing, and not pay. That's why the grocery store hires cashiers, rather than being on the honor system.
I imagine you don't live in the city. More and more of the merchandise at Safeway is behind lock and key (shampoo, toothbrushes, etc), and incidents with security detaining someone (who is often making a very loud scene) are not at all uncommon.
Regardless, I don't agree with your theory. It might work for a while, but as soon as people see other people getting things for free, and the prices they pay go up to compensate, they tend to decide not to be the suckers anymore.
I mean, look how quickly looting can start. Look at all the people willing to exploit loopholes in the system to cheat people out of money. Look at corruption in countries where it isn't effectively policed against. Look at how crime is celebrated in a significant amount of American culture (especially music).
And especially, look at how hard it is to make a buck by offering your software or music or what-have-you as "donation ware."
The reason people don't want to steal is that they have been in environments where, if they are dishonest, people eventually are onto them and don't trust them and otherwise "punish" them, even if just by social pressure and shaming and such. If they are in environments where this isn't the case, especially if they have been in such environments for a long time, they adapt to those environments.
Do you really think a grocery store would stay in business long if there was absolutely no tangible downside to just walking out without paying?
You're describing a vast minority of stores in the US, I don't know who you're trying to fool...
Sure you can go to a some neighborhoods and find stuff under lock and key and aggressive security, but the vast majorities of stores do not rely on that (in other words, the system as a whole does not rely on that, even if there are special cases for specific stores)
You're waxing poetic about rioting and people driven to extreme enough poverty they feel the need to steal Tide to sell for drugs... yeah it turns out disenfranchised people in extreme situations will not respect societal norms, not some deep insight.
We're talking about library books. You're straying into the most extreme ends of society to try and what exactly?
Feel free to identify as someone who only doesn't steal books late fees, I assure you you'll be in the minority.
>Look at how crime is celebrated in a significant amount of American culture (especially music).
If you live in a city and have looked into the phenomenon of urban "food deserts", you'd know that it is affected in significant part by the low per store margin of a grocery store being eaten by security and shoplifting costs. The OP may be somewhat hyperbolic, but he's not all wrong.
Yeah... you're pretty much proving my point with a fact that is not at all new to me
In areas where people are living on the extremes of society and in poverty (most people in food deserts are from low-income families) they're driven to go against a social norm (not stealing), and that act is enough to drive out stores because of razor thin margins, and they close.
That literally shows LP is not what's keeping stores open, it's the people choosing not to steal.
The only difference affecting shrinkage between the stores that close, and the stores that stay open is the people shopping in them. As soon as the people start to steal, the store can't literally can't afford matching increases in LP to counteract it, and closes.
If even a minor percentage more people decided to steal, many stores would literally not work.
> People do not have some inherent want to break social conventions
Unfortunately in some places "taking what can be taken" is a social convention. I know people who are saying: "People in europe are idiots, i can take anything i want from supermarket, and the policemen doesn't even dare to search me, though knows that i have taken something".
yet if there was no penalty for theft, there would be lots of theft.
(Indeed, California recently reduced the penalty for theft -- making it a misdemeanor that is very rarely prosecuted for thefts under $950, and suddenly there's a massive increase in theft, because it turns out that you can make decent money stealing stuff $949 at a time)
Cashier apparently is here because is the substantial amount of people, who will steal if not watched, but won't take a risk of cashier will confront them or will call a police.
So how do you explain self-checkout which is not watched nearly as carefully?
It's not a binary outcome. Self-checkout increases shrinkage, of course there are people who steal when not watched as carefully.
But the vast majority of people walking in a store are not stopped from stealing because of the odds of being caught.
Like, stores would literally not work if that was the case. Margins these stores have a razor thin. The amount of shrinkage they'd have to deal with, and the amount they'd have to invest in LP would be insane.
Similarly, the vast majority of people who are borrowing books would not steal them instead just because there was no late fee (it's not like there's no due date).
And similarly, libraries would not work if that was not the case. When you keep a book, it still has to be replaced before someone else can use it, and if you don't pay the late fees/replacement fees the library either eats the whole cost, or sends it to a collection agency and eats part of the cost.
How many libraries could afford to deal with a populace hellbent on stealing books regardless of late fees?
This might work better for a library than a for-profit institution like a grocery store.
I imagine that self checkout doesn't get all that many cheaters because people think there are cameras, and being busted for stealing is a pretty humiliating big deal most people wouldn't want to risk, even if the risk is small.
Not only is it true, self-checkout machines can be adjusted to account for expected shrinkage.
In one neighborhood the machine can be configured to be extremely sensitive to weight and quick to give loud warnings as soon as a mismatch occurs, in another it can be configured for easier use, by ignoring single weight mismatches and allowing voiding of cheaper items without employee oversight
self-checkout does somewhat increase shrinkage. Many stores (Target, for one) combat this by having a screen right on the self-checkout machine that shows the camera footage of you checking out, to remind you that you're being watched even if there isn't a human right there doing the watching.
But yeah, the increase in theft is probably a lot less than the savings from having to pay more checkers (since they typically can have one observer per 4-6 self-checkout kiosks)
I tend to agree. Many municipalities offer an annual discount day for folks who have outstanding toll road charges that aren't worth sending to collections. Voluntary payment skyrockets during these kinds of things.
My state instead just automatically suspends your license and sends you a traffic ticket (of about $350) if you have any outstanding toll charge after 90 days.
A concern is that when the "new normal" is "no fines" then there is no room to offer any sort of "limited amnesty," i.e. you have no more cards left to play.
Some of the comments here are surprising. Imo people who come to library to read books want to be a good member of the library. By assuming they will stop returning books due to no fees is just assuming worst of them. I was surprised when my county in California decided to get rid of all the fees. I had 5 books due and all my fees were forgiven. I donated way more to the library just because of this change. I was worried that how will they now afford to run the library effectively without fees. I guess people who can afford to give donations should do that and take the financial load out of the people who cannot afford. There is something freeing about this. Education and knowledge should really be free for all.
It's the medieval mentality, like there is a shortage of paper or something.
The amount of it wasted in my office alone could supply every library in town. I'd be happy if a kid stole 10 books from my shelf and read one.
The most expensive thing in the world is people that are unemployable, ignorant, need support and vote for the politicians we deserve!
There should be like a national policy where kids get paid for reading, every penny spent will payoff 100X.
I'd assume that most people would do their best to return books, but my concern would be that a tiny handful of bad actors could hoard books and ruin the system for everyone else
This doesn't seem to have happened, which is super encouraging! But I'm also very surprised!
You buy replacements. It's not fundamentally different from books getting generally worn out. Lending limits on categories of items effectively upper bound the cost of each individual bad actor to not prohibitively expensive.
Also I bet they deny check out until late's are retured, maybe with some buffer for lost or cant return it yet but will. I dont see it mentioned in the article.
Smart move imho. Bravo CPL.
I bet the same result happens elsewhere independent of assumptions about desire to pay.
Generally you are blocked from renting more books if you do not pay full amount of lost or not returned book after some point. My library allows 10 books at a time so if I don’t return due books then they put my account on hold.
How many books do you imagine they are going to keep/loose, a hundred? Paper is cheap, have a backup. Books in copyright are a bit more difficult, but still.
Yeah, it's really quite interesting in general the internally inconsistent view of human nature people will hold in to satisfy some higher order bias they have about how the world does or should work.
On top of all these they have free ebook programs where you can rent a book from your local library for free. They are really doing everything they can to support free materials. Its up to the people now.
> [C]hecked-out books automatically will renew as many as 15 times, as long as no one else places a hold on them...Items will be marked as "lost" and accounts will be charged a replacement fee one week after the last due date, but the charge will be cleared if the item is returned
They should work with the post office to accept returns. I live ten miles away from the closest library. It never makes sense to drive there solely to return a book and I work from home 95% of the time, so I’m rarely there by chance. As a result, i never go to the library.
If i could chuck the book into my mailbox to return it I’d stop by more often.
In my childhood my city had a "bookbus" driving around to the outskirts of the city so people didn't have to travel to the main library. You could pick up reservations, browse through a selection, and return books. It was a brilliant concept, and I was waiting for it faithfully every week. If I wasn't there the librarian/driver would ask the next week what I had been doing since I didn't turn up. He was a kind man and often had recommendations for me. I owe that man a lot for the escape he provided for a child from a troubled home.
Many years ago, as a teenager, I went down to the main library to return some books I had borrowed. I knew I was late and I knew I had to pay a fee because of it, but I'd rather pay the fees with my savings than lose access to the library.
The librarian at the desk is the same man that has been driving the bus for as long as I can remember. He takes the books, taps at the keyboard a bit, hand me my receipt, smiles and wish me a good day. I ponder for a few seconds about the late fees, but decide against just walking away - I really don't want it to somehow result in suspending my card. So I tell him that I believe there is some late fees that I need to pay. His takes off his glasses and his face turns serious and say "Someone that has been visiting my bookbus since he was about this high (signaling around waist), don't have to pay just because his miss the return date by a week. You returned them, that's what matters".
I still think about this, and if he is still alive I wish I could somehow tell him this story. He was passionate about his job and he made a difference.
I wonder if a "DVD-era Netflix-style" library could be a thing? i.e. a paid-postage return envelope included when you check a book out. (I'm guessing the physical size of a DVD is the only thing that made that trick viable for netflix)
Possibly. My thinking with the post office is that they would only work with the local library system, and to keep costs down even more could even just collect the books at the post office and someone from the library would collect them.
Lots of logistics and not very likely but I know it would remove my primary impediment to using the local library.
It's a good idea in theory. Receive books in the mail, return books in the mail.
I imagine the main cost-factor is size/weight of the books. The post office having to deliver an encyclopedia would be more costly than delivering a small paperback.
Maybe there's a way to work around that. It would at least encourage the readership of physical books (and maybe books in general). I don't go to to the library either, and really don't read books that much, but it certainly would be interesting to have the capacity to see reading materials online and have them mailed to me. Then again, if they are currently available for free at the library today, I suppose there's only so many excuses to make for my own laziness.
I imagine the main cost-factor is size/weight of the books.
Not really. Fourth class mail used to be called "book rate." It's slow, but it's super cheap, and was established in 1879 to encourage reading and literacy.
I think a better innovation would be for one of the SV "tech" delivery companies to team up with local libraries to deliver and retrieve books from people in their offices.
Book rate is not what it costs the USPS to ship books, it's what it costs for an individual to ship books. So it's still possible that it's too expensive to make sense.
Well, of course this is because everyone who had weeks/months of fines built up on overdue books is taking the opportunity to turn them in while they can with no penalty.
Whether a library that starts with a no-fine policy can sustain that is highly doubtful. What are we going to resort to, the librarian calling each borrower and asking nicely?
Maybe we should eliminate penalties for everything in life, because they're discriminatory or inequitable towards people who can't afford them. Remove speeding tickets, late fees for unpaid taxes, etc.
In fact, we should just remove prices for everything -- prices tend to reduce access to everything and make things inequitable!
Many libraries have a defined late-fee (e.g., $.50/day, regardless of whether the book is an expensive full color monster, or a children's book. Anyone here with children will probably agree that when you check out books for your little children, you are getting not one but 10 (or more) children's books. This discourages families from checking out books for their children, because even a few days late on 10 children's books starts to add up fast!
Presuming you still can't borrow a new book if you have overdue books at home, and you still have to pay for lost books, this seems reasonable. It reminds me of the old-school netflix DVD rental system where you can keep a movie as long as you want, but can't get a new one until you return the previous one. It also reminds me of being able to take out books for 3-5 months at a time as a grad student--it was so much nicer than undergrad!
If no fines, what prevents the people from taking the books and not return them again? Wanting to borrow new books? Ah, fair enough. (Just putting this out loud for people which didn't reach this conclusion yet, it took me a while.)
PS: Maybe the real way to fix this is paying a deposit upfront when becoming a member of the library, which is not high price, just the cost of an average book. You'd get this deposit when you decide to stop being a member.
People tend to behave differently with libraries than typical economics might suggest. People view the library as a shared resource, something the community owns together. The resistance to returning the borrowed items more often comes from embarrassment or shame than it does entitlement or attempted theft.
I fully agree. If they could somehow reframe the fine into a positive contribution they would not have to resort to short term hacks [0] like zeroing the fine.
How could that reframing work? Instead of free limited time lending plus optional fine after n days, make it a rental, but with the first n days free. If you return on time that's fine, but you're a freeloader then. Those who take their time with the books are the true supporters. Nobody will perpetually postpone returning because they feel uneasy about admitting wrongdoing (no matter how small).
[0] I believe it's only short term because bad habits usually take time to develop. Long term, the negatives will outweigh the positives. The person who would systematically take advantage of zero fine doesn't use the library, yet.
About five or six years ago, my local library eliminated fines for overdue books. I suspect it paid for itself pretty quickly based on my use. Prior to eliminating fines, I'd renew by email. Staff would process the email into the system.
Or I wouldn't renew by email, and then staff would handle my payment next time I checked out. At ten cents a day, odds were staff would break a bill. Staff would write a receipt and enter stuff in the computer system.
Manual work for a few cents. Manual work that didn't help anyone use the library. Manual work that didn't make the library better. Manual work that wasn't worth doing.
It was petty work involving petty cash. Paying fines didn't make anyone happy. Collecting fines didn't make staff happy. The fines were just inertia. Fines never motivated me to return books on time. What motivated me to return books on time was believing that returning books on time was good for the library. That didn't change when fines went away.
Our local library has a monthly "amnesty day" where you can return books and get new ones with the late fees waived. So if the fees are a problem for you, you come on that particular day; but if you're just late and want a different book now, then you pay a dollar or so.
But that's not the choice, the choice is between paying the fine or being unable to use the library.
The whole idea behind fines is that 1) imposing fines motivates people to return books on time and 2) disabling future borrowing motivates people to pay the fine, thereby making the motivation from 1 actually work. I don't think it's an "of course" level of obviousness that this scheme doesn't work in practice—otherwise libraries would have abandoned fines long ago.
But according to your logic, you would also oppose the first library doing this by making the same claim: that if it were obvious, it would have happened long ago.
Maybe it’s the case that the library has new information and/or is committed to a new or reinvigorated mission, and that this decision is an obvious step toward accomplishing that mission.
So we know how much the library was worth to them now. Instead they should offer a subscription service that is free as long as you have fewer than N books checked out.
And for the library, the choice was between not collecting fines and not getting the books back, or not collecting fines and getting the books back. So even in a model where the library is being run as a business, this is a better outcome. But, in a crazy model where the goal of the library is to provide access to books for free, this new system seems like an even bigger improvement!
Chicago made you pay the fine when you returned the book? You can't just drop it in the return and pay the fine later when you want to check out another book?
I don’t know if this is what goes through people’s heads, but why bother to spend the time to return the book and lose access to its utility when you can just keep it.
It's weird that in an era of zero-cost digital availability of practically everything mankind has ever produced we still care about the details of distributing printed-out copies of books.
Digital distribution has zero marginal cost and practically everyone has a device capable of reading the entire archive of humanity. Why do we still care about books per se?
First of all, if you look up Ebook library licensing fee, you'll see the crazy clusterfuck of ridiculous charges, so it's no where near "zero marginal cost". It should be, but it isn't.
Secondly, speaking as someone who is fully on-board on ebooks, for some books, such as large reference books, design/photography books and children books, physical books are still the way to go.
Plus extended reading on a tiny mobile phone is not feasible for many people, and not everyone can afford a large screen device for reading.
Because of tradition and nostalgia. Also i find the experience slightly better. But you are right: we don't need libraries anymore. We might need bookstores for nostalgic rich people who can still afford the space for a personal library.
There are many similar cases: when some school started fining late parents, more parents came in even later (because, after all, they paid to get their children cared for, so why bother?). It's a well known effect. Fines often reduce the feeling of responsibility.
Many parents know one of the good parenting rules is that incentivizing good behaviors works better than punishment for bad behaviors. This is another case where it applies to human behavior beyond children.
CPL did a study of who held the cards with suspended privileges because of late fees, and found out that the vast majority were people in poor neighborhoods, and of those the vast majority were children.
Now with the new rules it opens up book borrowing again to tens of thousands of people who need it most.
/CPL cardholder.