I was all ready to write about something else this morning but a story in the paper caught my eye and I thought how stupid. The city of La Crosse Library system may soon quit charging late fees for books, the fees today are 15 cents per day per item for adult items, audiobooks, cds, etc and 5 cents per day for kids materials except for lucky day items which carry a 50 cent per day charge for being late, to me those don’t seem too lucky if you misplace those. The new way to combat the not returning of books will be not to allow you to check out books without first returning the books you already checked out. Hmm, shouldn’t it be like that already? Research has shown apparently, that fines don’t actually prompt people to return books and that fines make the most vulnerable population from feeling comfortable and welcome in the library. Here is a novel idea, check out a book, return the book, repeat. If your book is late pay 15 cents a day. In a worst-case scenario let’s say the book was a year overdue it would have a fine of $54.75. How about instead of doing away with fines altogether have book amnesty day, or allow people who don’t want to pay not pay, maybe the power company would take note and have days like this too.
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