(September 9, 2010) To help younger library patrons start off the school year right, the Library has decided to waive all outstanding overdue fines for library cardholders younger than 18. Thats's right, whether it's 10 cents or $10.00, those overdue fines have been forgiven this one time in order for all of our local students to make full use of the library. So now is your chance to make a fresh start and visit the library. We know that children can forget to return books on time, or that siblings or parents sometimes don't return things to the library by the due date. Some kids have carried fines for years that they haven't been able to pay off or didn't know how to care of the fees. Library staff and Trustees discussed this decision before deciding to forgive these charges. We all agree that our goal is to enable everyone to use the library, and that this one-time waiver is a useful experiment to encourage young people to take advantage of the great collection at the Minerva Public Library.
Questions
In a time of much-reduced budgets, doesn't the library need that fine money?
Last year, fines and fees made up just over 2% of the library's revenue. While that money certainly is useful, the amount of money collected on overdue fines from children's library cards is only a portion of the total collection, and many children can't get to the library on their own to pay a fine, or don't have the money to do so.
Were all overdue fines really forgiven?
For library patrons who are classified as "youth," those under 18 years of age, all outstanding overdue fines on those patrons' cards were waived on August 27-28. Fines accrued after that date will not be waived.
What about library materials that were checked out and never returned?
LIbrary materials that don't come back at all are considered lost, and the patron is billed for the replacement cost of the materials. There are some younger patrons with billed charges on their cards, and those charges were not forgiven. A patron may return lost items to the library and, since the those items ares now back home, the replacement charge is then waived. We are happy to discuss with a patron what to do about making good the cost of lost items.
Won't forgiving all these fines enourage kids not return books on time?
This back-to-school special is a one-time experiment. The library has not offered such a blanket waiver before,and we have no plans to do so again. Our intention is to help out younger library patrons at the beginning of this school year by resetting all their fines to zero in hopes that they will now pay better attention to library due dates and be more reponsible when using the library.