Michael Stephens and Jenny Levine are teaching a course for ALA titled Library 2.0, and as part of that course they asked me to submit a brief podcast discussing John Blyberg’s four Transformative Realms and how several things at my……

The fine thing is totally out of my hands and I expect nothing to come of it, so in essence, you’ve called me on my rhetoric, but that doesn’t mean I don’t think there can be effective change with respect to fines that would encourage library use.

Finding the right balance between idealism and reality is a difficult thing to do. It’s that balancing act, however, that feeds passion–and I couldn’t do my job without that.

Thanks for replying. I hope that if you ever do get a chance to try a no fines policy that it turns out better for you than I feel it has at MPOW. It makes me quite angry that people would abuse this policy and it makes me cynical (as if you couldn’t tell).

Nonetheless, if you want to sell a no fines policy trial – maybe suggest starting with juvenile materials (or some types of juvenile materials). You could make the argument that kids aren’t held responisble for many of their mistakes in the rest of society and it is much harder for them to come up with money. I really enjoy reading your ideas… maybe you’ll rekindle some of my idealism. ;)

I believe that at MPOW, we could absorb that shrinkage and have it be a worthwhile expenditure if it were successful in significantly increasing the number of people who check material out of the library.

You could be correct that fines are a necessity, but that shouldn’t stop us from finding out. Other options exist as well, such as regular amnesty days that encourage people to return material and wipe their fine balances.

I run into people all the time who tell me that they would check something out of the library if they didn’t have a fine. I find that terribly sad because they are otherwise very responsible people who are caught up in life and forgot about returning their library material. People’s lives do not revolve around us and we certainly don’t need the money that fines generate.

Mind you, this is better than it used to be as early as last year. MPOW’s policy used to be that anything checked out on a child’s card wasn’t fined (again, except when they age to lost and are sent to a collection agency). Well… since parents can use their kid’s cards… lots of things never came back until the collection agency came calling (and some not even then). Eventually, the Board got fed up with this and tightened things up. Hopefully, they’ll go all the way and fine children’s material too.

To be honest, this behaviour isn’t surprising… it’s called the tragedy of the commons. No one respects something that “everyone” owns. As a tax payer, I want people fined for failing to return items on time. I definitely don’t want my tax dollars wasted buying second (or third, or tenth) copies of items that people have stolen – and no, I’m not over 40.