I served on a library board in a community I once lived in. I worked at a library in college. I spent much of my spare time during the day in middle school and high school libraries. I appreciate all that librarians and employees of libraries do to make sure we have ample opportunities to learn through reading, and I believe in the importance of this opportunity being available to all.
Today, libraries are much more than a place to check out books. They offer services like home delivery, notary, meeting rooms, printing/scanning/faxing, tax forms, streaming/downloading options, genealogy studies and so much more.
If you have been to a public library when school lets out, you also know it has become a makeshift daycare for many families as well. That creates a different type of library than what many of us remember as children, but it is simply part of our changing societal needs.
Through all this, libraries also taught us a responsibility to take care of something that was loaned to us and the need to return it on time and in the same condition we received it. With that valuable life lesson in mind, I read with great interest a story about the Clive Library eliminating late fees for overdue books. Clive isn’t the first library to make this decision, and it certainly won’t be the last. Prior rules would not allow patrons to use library services if they had fines of more than $5, and the money produced from the late fees represented only a sliver of the operating revenue for most libraries.
This change that so many public libraries are making is about making the facilities more accessible, and that’s a goal we should all agree with. But somewhere in this loan of materials, there should be assumed responsibility. The not-yet-fully-developed mind of a child cannot yet comprehend how the world works, but children do understand penalties — and adults do, too.
Most overdue fees at libraries are minimal. The Clive library charged 20 cents per day. The level of the fee isn’t what is important. Having consequences for actions is.
I will watch with interest as this change unfolds through the years. I hope it does what it was intended to do and provide more opportunities for people to access library services. I also hope that we can find other ways to help people of all ages understand the need to meet deadlines and to return loaned materials in the same condition in which we borrowed them.
Have a wonderful Wednesday, and thanks for reading.
Shane Goodman
President and Publisher
Big Green Umbrella Media
shane@dmcityview.com
515-953-4822, ext. 305
