Get ready for the return of late fines at Windsor Public Library, following the release of a report Friday that says a “bold” 21-month no-fine experiment was an abject failure.
The pilot project was approved two years ago at the urging of disgraced former CEO Barry Holmes, who wanted WPL to become the first large urban library in Ontario to not charge fines for overdue materials, says the report that’s up for discussion at the library board’s meeting on Tuesday.
The report’s findings sound the death knell for the no-fine experiment, library board chairman Peter Frise confirmed Friday. The library has lost about $200,000 in fines it would otherwise have collected since the pilot started Jan. 1, 2012. That’s more than $100,000 a year, which happens to be the cash-strapped library’s annual budget for buying new materials, he noted. “It crippled our ability to renew the collection.”
“It’s a very inefficient way to do things,” said Frise, part of the new board that came along following the departure last year of Holmes in a cloud of controversy surrounding questionable use of library credit cards by him and then-board chairman Coun. Al Maghnieh.
“If there’s no incentive to bring things back, some people simply won’t,” Frise said. “And that’s exactly what we found and that’s why this (no-fine) system isn’t used at other library systems.”
The report says Holmes was more interested in being first in Ontario than in providing data supporting his idea.
“I don’t know what the motivation was, we’ve been unable to locate any plans or studies that indicated this was a good idea,” said Frise. “It was just something they thought was a good idea and it has not been a success.”
The report says the consensus of customers is they’d rather pay fines for late items than be blocked from borrowing new materials, which is the no-fine method of encouraging timely returns.
“The Windsor Public Library wants to remain relevant and does not want customers to be affected by missing materials,” says the report. “This is becoming increasingly difficult under a fine-free system.”
The report suggests a 30-cent-a day fine for adults and points out that in a survey of 10 other Ontario library systems, all use fines ranging between 25 cents and 40 cents.
Maghnieh said he was surprised by the report because “it completely contradicts a previous administrative report from Aug. 16 2012, indicating that the no late fine policy was popular among users and overall successful to the circulation of the library system.”
If the no-fine system has had problems since then, administration should try and find ways to improve it before eliminating it, he said.
Library board member Jo-Anne Gignac said the WPL can’t just write off the revenue stream it used to get from fines.
“It’s a significant amount of money,” she said. “What surprised me was there was no real business plan made for the elimination of them in the first place.”
The report doesn’t have a single positive thing to say about the no-fine system. Holmes and Maghnieh had contended that library fines put a negative connotation on reading and they were hoping the no-fine approach would lead to increased library usage.
But that hasn’t happened, according to current CEO Chris Woodrow. “I don’t believe the figures would bear that out, the statistics have been pretty constant,” he said Friday. “The numbers are not really down or up,” since the no-fine system came into effect.
Frise said he realizes people don’t like paying fines, but the fact is people don’t have to pay fines as long as they return things on time. “It’s not a user fee, it’s a fine," he said.
from: Windsor Star
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