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Chicago book returns surge 240% after city eliminates fines

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Re: Chicago book returns surge 240% after city eliminates fines

#121

Post by mumblemumble »

vanniv wrote: post #79
reaperducer wrote: post #28

I think what's being missed in the discussion on HN is the reason CPL eliminated fines. It's not about the money, nor is it about getting the books back. It's to improve access to the library system. CPL did a study of who held the cards with suspended privileges because of late fees, and found out that the vast majority were people in poor neighborhoods, and of those the vast majority were children. Now with the new…

So, I'm curious. Did they require that the books be returned in order to open up borrowing again? Like, just, "please bring the books back, we'll disappear the fees and just take 'em back and all is forgiven"? Or did they just... reactivate the accounts and hope that history won't repeat? (Genuinely curious -- the articles I've read on the subject, like this one, are all excited about more library everything, but qui…

If you lose the book, you can replace it with another copy in good condition.

The policy used to be that you had to pay whatever the library paid for it, which could be quite a penny if they bought one of the library editions. Now a $7 trade paperback will do.

Re: Chicago book returns surge 240% after city eliminates fines

#122

Post by moate »

vkizl wrote: post #94
reaperducer wrote: post #28

I think what's being missed in the discussion on HN is the reason CPL eliminated fines. It's not about the money, nor is it about getting the books back. It's to improve access to the library system. CPL did a study of who held the cards with suspended privileges because of late fees, and found out that the vast majority were people in poor neighborhoods, and of those the vast majority were children. Now with the new…

Being poor prevents you from returning books in time.

Good morning!

What is your point? Of course we all understand that being poor doesn't (directly) mean you can't return books. I could write a whole essay about how being poor could indirectly make it harder to return books (less free time from working, less access to easy transportation, etc) but that's not really a point worth making, and I don't think it would change your mind on...whatever it is you're trying to bring up.

What exactly is your point though? Just curious here. That the library directors made a mistake? That OP's point about library card suspension being correlated to income doesn't mean it's causation? Where were you trying to push the conversation here?

Re: Chicago book returns surge 240% after city eliminates fines

#123

Post by usrusr »

sircastor wrote: post #52
knocte wrote: post #48

If no fines, what prevents the people from taking the books and not return them again? Wanting to borrow new books? Ah, fair enough. (Just putting this out loud for people which didn't reach this conclusion yet, it took me a while.) PS: Maybe the real way to fix this is paying a deposit upfront when becoming a member of the library, which is not high price, just the cost of an average book. You'd get this deposit whe…

People tend to behave differently with libraries than typical economics might suggest. People view the library as a shared resource, something the community owns together. The resistance to returning the borrowed items more often comes from embarrassment or shame than it does entitlement or attempted theft.

I fully agree. If they could somehow reframe the fine into a positive contribution they would not have to resort to short term hacks [0] like zeroing the fine.

How could that reframing work? Instead of free limited time lending plus optional fine after n days, make it a rental, but with the first n days free. If you return on time that's fine, but you're a freeloader then. Those who take their time with the books are the true supporters. Nobody will perpetually postpone returning because they feel uneasy about admitting wrongdoing (no matter how small).

[0] I believe it's only short term because bad habits usually take time to develop. Long term, the negatives will outweigh the positives. The person who would systematically take advantage of zero fine doesn't use the library, yet.

Re: Chicago book returns surge 240% after city eliminates fines

#124

Post by rhinoceraptor »

quotemstr wrote: post #58

It's weird that in an era of zero-cost digital availability of practically everything mankind has ever produced we still care about the details of distributing printed-out copies of books. Digital distribution has zero marginal cost and practically everyone has a device capable of reading the entire archive of humanity. Why do we still care about books per se?

It's a lot harder to focus on reading a book when you can just jump over to youtube instead.

Re: Chicago book returns surge 240% after city eliminates fines

#125

Post by mrfredward »

louhike wrote: post #97
woadwarrior01 wrote: post #77

The public libraries in Ireland decided to eliminate fines early this year and it seems to have had the opposite effect. In some cases, people don’t seem to return books at all. I’d placed a hold on a book, a couple of months ago and it looks like the people who’d borrowed the only two copies of the book in the system haven’t returned it in over 8 months now. I‘d initially thought that eliminating fines was a great i…

You base your opinions on your own individual experience, which proves nothing for the whole system.

In fairness, I don't think the article proves much for the system either. A single month of data, when there is pent up demand for people to return books and a publicity campaign, virtually guarantees this month will be very different from all the others.

Re: Chicago book returns surge 240% after city eliminates fines

#126

Post by electricviolet »

woadwarrior01 wrote: post #77

The public libraries in Ireland decided to eliminate fines early this year and it seems to have had the opposite effect. In some cases, people don’t seem to return books at all. I’d placed a hold on a book, a couple of months ago and it looks like the people who’d borrowed the only two copies of the book in the system haven’t returned it in over 8 months now. I‘d initially thought that eliminating fines was a great i…

In fairness, my library system has a fairly steep fine system and I've gone 8 months without returning a book before.

Anecdote vs. anecdote.

Re: Chicago book returns surge 240% after city eliminates fines

#127

Post by beokop »

saalweachter wrote: post #117
aquadrop wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh yeah, that once was a big problem for me when I was something like 9 years old. I was using library a lot and one day I lost the book. And there were fines for that and for late return as well. I didn't tell my parents because we didn't have a lot of money, so that would be a problem. I saved my lunch money etc for two months and then went to the library to solve the problem. They were pretty nice about it and let…

All problems are big when you are little.

All problems are small with perspective!

Re: Chicago book returns surge 240% after city eliminates fines

#128

Post by throwaway-hn123 »

vkizl wrote: post #94
reaperducer wrote: post #28

I think what's being missed in the discussion on HN is the reason CPL eliminated fines. It's not about the money, nor is it about getting the books back. It's to improve access to the library system. CPL did a study of who held the cards with suspended privileges because of late fees, and found out that the vast majority were people in poor neighborhoods, and of those the vast majority were children. Now with the new…

Being poor prevents you from returning books in time.

Being an ignorant dick prevents you from having sex with anything that isn't your hand.

Just saying.

Re: Chicago book returns surge 240% after city eliminates fines

#129

Post by mumblemumble »

60654 wrote: post #43
reaperducer wrote: post #28

I think what's being missed in the discussion on HN is the reason CPL eliminated fines. It's not about the money, nor is it about getting the books back. It's to improve access to the library system. CPL did a study of who held the cards with suspended privileges because of late fees, and found out that the vast majority were people in poor neighborhoods, and of those the vast majority were children. Now with the new…

This seems like an excellent move on the part of the library system and mayor's office. I don't have a horse in this race (no late books in a long time) but it's great to see this being implemented for everybody's benefit.

Even if you return all your books on time, it's still valuable, because of the huge jump they're seeing in the rate at which books are returned.

Random anecdote: About 15 years ago, I was looking for a somewhat obscure book, and found that it was something like 6 months overdue. Later on, while hanging out with a friend, I mentioned this to a friend who had a common interest in the subject matter, with some comment to the effect of, "What happened there!?"

Well, this friend went over to his bookshelf, picked a book off the shelf, and handed it to me. It was the very same 6 month overdue book I had been looking for. He explained that he had lost it somewhere, and, by the time he had found it, the fines were already up to something like $50, which he couldn't afford, and he wasn't done reading it yet, so he figured he might as well keep it since it was the last library book he'd ever be checking out.

IIRC the statistic quoted when CPL announced this program suggests that some version of that story was playing out for thousands and thousands of books every year. Which negatively affects access to information for everyone in the city, not just the people who were getting slapped with fines.

Re: Chicago book returns surge 240% after city eliminates fines

#130

Post by koheripbal »

woadwarrior01 wrote: post #77

The public libraries in Ireland decided to eliminate fines early this year and it seems to have had the opposite effect. In some cases, people don’t seem to return books at all. I’d placed a hold on a book, a couple of months ago and it looks like the people who’d borrowed the only two copies of the book in the system haven’t returned it in over 8 months now. I‘d initially thought that eliminating fines was a great i…

In reality, that might be the case here as well. All the OP article is saying is that there was a ~2.5 increase in returns just after the penalties were eliminated. That might be 2.5x a very small number, and it might also come with a longer term increase in book theft.
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