By Rebecca T. Miller
February 16, 2016
Last month the Park Ridge Public Library, IL, approved fees for those using the facility for business purposes. On its face, this decision runs counter to the burgeoning interest in libraries embracing a workforce that is increasingly outside the office by developing coworking spaces and gathering essential tools to enable them to succeed. On a deeper level, it runs counter to the ingenuity involved in continually removing barriers to access—even barriers constructed to keep the use of the library fair, such as overdue fines—and this I find much more problematic and worth contemplating.
This got me thinking about the trouble with fees and fines. While many hold that fines, for example, are an incentive to return materials, and fees help pay for stretch services—or, as the Park Ridge example illustrates, intentionally to limit a certain use of the library—one thing is true of both: enforcing them costs resources. People, front and back of the house, have to dedicate time to developing and implementing processes, expanding communications, and paying attention to policing. The return on investment (ROI) is worth examining before instituting a fee or fine since, as has been seen where fines for overdue materials have been removed, the cost of collection can be higher than the revenue gained or the loss offset.
That’s hard cost, which any library manager and board should have top of mind. Then there are the soft costs, such as how this choice affects the library’s relationship with its community, what it signals about the library’s mission, and if it undermines an effective alliance between the library and the people it serves. Is a precedent being set that threatens to kick off a trend in service—intentional or not? It’s important to bear in mind what such a decision says about the library and will keep saying every time a policy is enforced.
Consider access. When a fee or a fine is present, a level of access is at risk, if not inherently denied. Given the core principal defining the library as a place to be used freely, any policy that limits access should be questioned, or at least designed to be as forgiving and easy to work with as possible.
Consider what it signals about money. Fines and fees are articulated in a budget as revenue, meaning that this income is then dependent upon people misusing the library or, in the case of fees, using it for a limited purpose. It can be hard to give up a revenue line, even one that has poor ROI, if a board doesn’t see the overarching benefit of sacrificing it. Hence, precedent gets set—and set in stone.
There’s also an issue with reinforcing the perception that the library is providing competition to local business enterprises. In Park Ridge, creating a fee structure for business use of the library buys into some idea that the library is taking an opportunity away from the community as a whole, while the truth is just the opposite. One fee threatens to lead to another. For instance, should coding be taught at the library without a fee if others teach it for a fee? I certainly think so. It gets back to access.
Worse, however, fines and fees can confuse the reality that libraries are a shared resource with the misunderstanding that they are a place for free stuff. A fee begs the question: Why charge for one thing but not another? More important, as I have written in my editorial “Worth the Price,” libraries that focus on being about free stuff miss the point. We should be fostering a deeper understanding of the library as something we all invest in (and support financially through taxes) and care for as a community, commanding our ownership and engagement. The message that gets conveyed in a fine-free setting, for example, is that these books (to pick one format) are all of ours, and we’re here to look after them and share them together. This may seem naive, but in settings where fines have been exchanged for donation jars, the goodwill flows.
Ultimately, we must reflect upon our bond with the people libraries are designed to serve. Interactions with patrons can become about the fine or fee, instead of the need addressed by the service. This risks turning librarians and clerks into cops and collection agents and diverting backroom capacity to fee and fine maintenance. In the process, it can set up an adversarial relationship between the library and its users rather than forging an alliance that supports a vibrant interchange. I vote for the library as ally rather than as adversary.
[Note: Several relatively recent examples of libraries giving up overdue fines, and the reasoning behind the decisions, are covered in these local news stories from Albany’s Times Union, The Repository in Canton, OH, and boston.com. If you have recently analyzed overdue fines for your library and opted to give them up or keep them, please share your insights with us at LJ for possible future coverage. Thank you—Ed.]
From: Library Journal
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