Over a million kids in New York City have public library cards. But about a fifth of them have blocked accounts due to fines.
It's not so hard to get blocked. Your card gets suspended if you hit $15 in fines. At the New York Public Library, children under 18 years old are fined 10 cents a day per book (that's a 25 cent fine for adults). And all media, like DVDs and tapes, will cost you $3 for every late day. For many kids, they're too intimidated to either talk to their parents or librarians about it, so they just stop going.
New York Public Library President Tony Marx says library access should never be about who can afford to pay the fines.
"We've heard stories of parents saying to their kids, 'We don't want you to borrow books because you might be late with them and then you'll have fines to worry about.' That's crazy!" said Marx.
Marx is currently on the look-out for some creative ways to not fine kids, but still hold them accountable. One idea he's toying with: put a hold on a child's account until they simply return their overdue materials, no fines involved. Five years ago, Marx granted city-wide amnesty to children with fines, and he says they saw 80,000 kids return to the library over time. Now, he's trying to secure a $10 million endowment to get rid of fines in perpetuity.
eeladnohr on May 9th, 2017 at 15:49 UTC »
My city recently did a month of library fine amnesty and recovered so many materials that were thought to be lost, that they did it again in April. They recovered a ton of books. I guess it more than made up for the lack of budget to replace books vs. lost revenue from fines.
OswaldTheLucky on May 9th, 2017 at 15:38 UTC »
Our library does everything it possibly can to avoid people paying fines: they are waved if you bring in canned foods non perishable items, socks, items for women's and homeless shelters. Almost everything is something that we have laying around the house. No money fines and the community is helped, win -win
HocusKrokus on May 9th, 2017 at 15:31 UTC »
The town I'm in doesn't do fines for minor library accounts until it's 2 months late, and then its onky 1$ a week. They link the account with a parent account and send reminders the day after the due date and weekly. My kids love the library, and there's always other kids there when we go. It would seem to me that if you want to get kids in libraries, you should do simple things like have events that encourage kids and parents to show up. Ours has events every day. Simple, low or no cost events, like a movie screening, book reading, craft days, or learning games. Study groups and free tutors for young adults in the afternoons. I know I'm probably pretty lucky in that regard, but it's a big community thing in small towns