Don’t get too stressed out about library items’ due dates, with the Greater Sudbury Public Library board voting to permanently eliminate late fees last week.
“We’re excited about this,” library CEO and chief librarian Brian Harding told Sudbury.com, adding that it’s been “tried and tested” by other libraries and will help reduce barriers.
“We’ve heard stories of children who aren’t allowed to use the library because their parents are afraid they will accumulate overdue fines,” Harding said, citing this as a common occurrence.
“That is the worst thing we can hear. ... It tells us that there’s a problem here, and that we’re doing something wrong.”
Coinciding with the city’s public library system doing away with late fees, they’re implementing an auto-renewal program, wherein items not returned on time are automatically renewed for another lending cycle (21 days for books), as long as there isn’t a hold on the item.
They’re also issuing more due-date reminders to patrons, by email and phone.
Despite the elimination of late fees, items still need to be returned.
Once an item has been overdue for 42 days, it’s classified as “billed,” which means the library has assumed it is lost and the patron is billed its replacement cost.
Prior to paying the replacement cost owed, they will be barred from borrowing items from the but can still use services which do not require physical lending.
As soon as they’ve either paid the replacement cost or returned the item, their borrowing privileges return.
“We strive to be very flexible,” Harding said. “All we really want is to have that item in our collection again, we’re not trying to punish people for how they use the library.”
Greater Sudbury’s public library system began eliminating overdue charges when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, due to people’s ability to get around becoming limited by various health measures.
Even prior to the pandemic, Harding said the library board was already considering eliminating late fees.
In 2019, the American Library Association passed a resolution asserting the “imposition of monetary library fines creates a barrier to the provision of library and information services,” and urged libraries “to scrutinize their practices of imposing fines on library patrons and actively move toward eliminating them.”
“Our work is all about eliminating barriers,” Harding said. “The reason public libraries exist is to eliminate barriers to information and to other scarce resources like computers and the internet, and we do that work on a day-to-day basis.”
The people who most need library services are also those who are the least likely to afford to pay overdue charges, he added.
Prior to 2020, the library collected approximately $40,000 to $50,000 in late fees, which Harding said is a relatively small portion of their annual budget of approximately $10 million.
Although the return of items on time slowed down in the heart of pandemic restrictions, Harding said they’ve since recovered and currently echo pre-pandemic conditions.
“The initial impetus for overdue fines is that we need a way to compel people to bring things back, and what the pandemic has taught us is that we don’t need overdue fines to do that,” Harding said. “It’s not a good incentive.”
Tyler Clarke covers city hall and political affairs for Sudbury.com.
