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Dear all, Many thanks indeed for the many replies you sent on the part-fines payment question yesterday. There are quite a few options in practice, and this certainly gives us food for thought on how to proceed. We currently prefer and encourage full payment (with usual discretionary powers for supervisors, but the policy has become a bit of a grey area lately, thus the reason for reconsidering. Your responses are very helpful. I've copied them below - for those who are interested. The vast majority support part-payment, many with payment schemes. Best wishes Pam We allow part payment of fines if the amount is over £20. It needs to be agreed how much will be paid off by when or their account will be blocked again. We allow part-payment of fines, but since we operate a policy of zero-tolerance for issuing when fines are on records, this probably does not help with the query! I allow students to part pay but there must be an agreement of a suitable 'paid in full' date and a note of this is added to their record. Payment in instalments can be negotiated as follows: Fines totalling less than £10.00: user must pay at least £2.00 each time further items are issued. Fines totalling £10.00 or more: user must pay at least £5.00 each time further items are issued. Fines totalling £30.00 or more: user will not be permitted to borrow further while this amount is outstanding. We do, however, normally expect the student to pay off the whole fine eventually. We do allow part payment of fines but will normally secure agreement as to when the rest will be paid. We allow part payment of fines. A reader can still borrow with a fine on their record of under five pounds. Once the fine reaches five pounds and over it must be reduced to under the five pounds before can resume borrowing. We regularly receive part payment of fines here. It is quite easy to record on the Dynix Horizon circulation system. We have a policy of not allowing any more loans or renewals once fines reach £10, so students pay of the excess to maintain borrower rights. We do not insist that a fine is paid when it is incurred and regularly receive amounts in instalments. I myself always remind readers that they owe us money as a "block" flashes up when their card is scanned for issuing loans. I also ask them if they would like to pay it off now, frequently with success. If our students accrue fines and wish to either renew their items or take new items out, then they must pay a minimum of £1 per day (the whole fine if less than £1). This seems to work quite well as once they have a fine on their record they are unable to renew anything online, place reservations or order ILLs. Therefore, if they require these services it is their incentive to pay the full amount. If their fines exceed £30 then the minimum they must pay is the difference, i.e.: if they have a £45 fine, they must pay a minimum of £15 before loan privileges are reinstated. Fines carry over into each academic year and if there are outstanding debts by the time the student is due to graduate then the fine is transferred to the Finance Dept for them to chase (as a debt to the college). We don't fine staff at all. We allow part payment. We only insist on payment if the fine is over £15 and, ultimately, pre-graduation. We allow part payment, but a block is put on if fines go over 28 days or £10 We do not allow part payment of fines except in exceptional circumstances after interview by the lending Services Librarian. The students are informed on registering at the library in the handbook. I've never worked anywhere that had an easily workable system for part payment. Here we don't allow any borrowing at all until the debt is cleared but I will waive 50% if the amount is large provided all the books are back. We allow part payment. Users must have fines of £2 or under to continue borrowing, so a student with a £6 fine can part pay £4 (or more) to continue borrowing. We may raise this ceiling to £5 when we introduce self-issue. We have a scheme where students can set up an instalment plan with either myself or another desk supervisor. The minimum payment per week is £5, they mustn't add any more fines to their total, and they mustn't miss any payments. If the student breaks these rules then the fines traps go back on their card and they are not allowed to borrow again until the full fines amount is paid off. I record on a form, the dates and payment schedule, the student reads and signs the agreement. Each week they come in and pay an instalment, I sign both my form and theirs so that we both have a record. Of course they are welcome at any time to pay off the amount in full. We have just had a change of policy, in the direction of ceasing to accept part-payment. We allow part payment but insist that all fines are paid before any items can be borrowed. We allow renewals of items currently out to them. We allow part payment of fines and for lost books. The charge has to be £10 or over and we ask for a minimum payment of £5 per week. Providing the student keeps up with the part payments they can continue to borrow and they sign a form agreeing to this condition. It is very useful to have something to offer in the case of large fines or repayment costs. For payments of over £10, students can set up payment plans of weekly instalments. If the fine is between £10 and £20, there is a minimum instalment of £5 per week. Over £20, and it rises to a minimum of £10 per week. Unless a fine is paid off in full, or a payment plan is set up, users are not allowed to borrow anything. After a month, if nothing has been paid, their fine is transferred to our Accounts department and then becomes a College debt, which has to be settled with them. For fines under £10, we generally stick to a 'payment in full' policy before allowing to borrow, but it does depend on which member of staff serves them and what kind of mood they are in! We have a flexible policy which allows users to aggregate fines over the term, and pay them at the start of the following term (when the postal order arrives!). This has been quite popular and successful, as it takes the immediate heat out of the situation, and enables the user to continue borrowing. It also gives control of their library account to the user. I would like to extend this policy further, when circumstances permit. We are planning to introduce chip 'n pin over the summer, which will further encourage bulk payment, and thus reduce our cash handling overhead, which is still considerable. We do allow part payment at any time; the stipulation is that once their fine reaches the next term unpaid, they cannot borrow until it is all paid off. We allow part payment. we have a fines limit under which they can continue to borrow. its currently £5.00. we have a lot of readers owing us £4.99 Pam Clouston Public Services Manager Edinburgh University Library Main Library George Square Edinburgh EH8 9LJ 0131 651 1520