Dear all,

Apologies for not getting a summary of replies out before now, and very
many thanks to everyone who took the time to send some very interesting
responses. In fact, we have decided that the issue merits some deeper
thought, and we are going to take some more time to think about and
discuss it internally and also perhaps along with some of our closer
neighbour institutions, with a view to implementing any changes in
September 2005. A very raw summary of the replies is listed below.
Apologies for this, but I thought that I might not get the time over the
summer to do a proper report. Several institutions use sanctions rather
than fines, and there are some interesting reports on this. I think this
a fairer system, as it applies to everyone alike, including those able
and willing to pay fines in order to keep books. I also think the
comment "students, especially part time and non-standard students,  can
end up paying large fines on books that ostensibly no one else wants"
hits the nail on the head. So I hope that we can come up with something
innovative (although I am aware that this is a tall order!)
Thanks again for all the replies, I will let the list know what we
decide to do.

Best wishes

Pam Clouston
Public Services Manager

Main Library
George Square 
Edinburgh
EH8 9LJ

0131 651 1520

Abolishment of Fines message to LISLINK  May 2004   Replies:


Have not  done this, but would be very interested to hear if others have
done so, and how they got on. Does your University authority regard
fines as part of Library income? 

I have considered this, but have never quite been able to bring myself
to 
do it - because turnaround is essential here (we have shortish standard 
loan periods) I thought it might encourage the users who were inclined
to 
gamble. Unless we really hiked the fines on books that were required by 
another user, they might think that the risk of one of the five books
they 
had being reserved was worth taking, while they might balk at the idea
of 
paying the fine for all five.

We've gone the route of reminders and easy renewals - they get an e-mail

reminder the day before the books are due, and can renew them straight
away 
via e-mail as long as they aren't reserved by another reader. They get
an 
overdue message the day after it is due, and two further reminders 3 and
6 
days later.

I'd be very interested to see your findings. I think that the length of
the 
original loan period is probably key to this - if you loan for several 
weeks, then it won't have such a big impact as if you only loan for a
few days.


We do not fine at all, but have a sanctions policy 
in place which means that if a user brings a book back late (reserved 
or not) they are blocked automatically (by the system) from taking books
out of the 
library for the same period as the overdue.  For example, if the most 
overdue book was 10 days late, then the block on taking any more out 
would be 10 days.  

To answer your question, I think that in general the system is seen as 
fair and equitable, in a way that fines are not (those that can afford 
fines may not see them as a deterrent).  Of course there are some 
users who are in agreement with our blocking policy, but not when it 
applies to them!  The user services librarian or the library manager 
handle any situations that are exceptional, e.g. illness and other 
extenuating circumstances so that the policy is applied fairly and 
evenly.  Part time students who are only in one day a week need to be 
careful to renew on time.  We do take phone renewals and students 
are asked to manage their own library record and keep books up to 
date, and they can do this from off-campus.  



We do charge for those type of overdues, but only 10p per day. However,
I'm 
replying because of our normal loan procedures for academics. We lend
Normal 
Loan books to academics for a whole academic year (i.e. whenever
borrowe, due 
back the following early July) whereas they only go for 28 days to
students. A 
month before the July due date we send a reminder list and say not to
renew the 
items until they have checked they still have all the items. Of course
each year 
we get several saying "I returned this months ago". These ones are a lot
harder 
to resolve than when students say it, as we are talking about events
from longer 
ago. We also get informed "I returned this months ago" when they get one
of 
their Normal Loan books recalled for another borrower. Again, hard to
resolve 
and exacerbated by the fact that someone now wants the book. I'd suspect
that if 
there were no fines to incentivize regular renewals, then what you'd end
up with 
would be more frequent occurances of claims to have already returned
something, 
only coming to light when someone else actually wants the book in
question, with 
the longer timescales involved  since the date of supposed return
meaning less 
chance of tracking down the books. 

We don't charge fines for anything apart from gross misconduct such as
theft etc. We apply a points system (see below) and ban students from
the short loan collection for 2 weeks if they amass 5 points. (0.5
points per hour per item). We don't apply points to normal loan items
unrequested by another reader. We did introduce points for requested
overdue items over a year ago, but are still struggling for technical
reasons to implement it on our new Library system. I've never noticed
any goodwill coming from not penalising users, but maybe we are avoiding
some bad will; hard to say. Many students offer to pay money rather than
be banned, which inclines me to think it's an effective penalty, but
there are certainly points to be made in support of the opposite view. I
am never confident our penalty system is working well, and I'd certainly
be interested in knowing what you finally decide to do.
[There is a points option within our library system, but it's just not
flexible enough so we have reverted to our former practice of using the
fine system, but ignoring the £ signs. I have spent a fair bit of time
haranguing the supplier about this  but no joy so far.]


I would be very interested to get a summary of any replies you get to
this message.  I'm not sure if what you suggest would be possible on our
Library management system but we do have a lot of problems here to do
with fines and payments for lost books.

I am on a small group looking at fines and billing and although we
recently made "improvements" to our system it hasn't shown any concrete
reduction in the amount of fines being paid.  The university is asking
the learning Centre to tackle the problem of student debt and I am aware
that students, especially part time and non-standard students,  can end
up paying large fines on books that ostensibly no one else wants.

We abolished fines for non-reserved books a while ago.  Fines are
charged on reserved books (users are informed by email if the book they
have on loan has a hold on it) and the very short loan collection behind
the desk.
Far fewer disputes over fines.  No evidence of people keeping books out
too long - we do cut off their borrowing privileges if they keep books
very overdue.  Only problems are making the system do what you want.
For multiple copies we inform all borrowers that a hold has been placed
and we fine all of them who keep their copies overdue while the book is
on the reserved list.  Fines are switched off once the reservation is
fulfilled.  This can be tricky to program.  Our reasoning was that if we
didn't fine everyone then users could just hang on to their copy until
someone else brought it back.  If only one copy is recalled then other
copies could be recirculating while we wait for that one copy to be
returned.