The Library Ends Late Fees, and the Treasures Roll In

Some gadgets, checked out many years in the past, arrived with apologetic notes. “Enclosed are books I’ve borrowed and stored in my home for 28-50 years! I’m 75 years previous now and these books have helped me by way of motherhood and my educating profession,” one patron wrote in an unsigned letter that accompanied a field of books dropped off on the New York Public Library’s predominant department final fall. “I’m sorry for dwelling with these books so lengthy. They grew to become household.”

Three DVD copies of “The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day,” a 2009 motion movie about Irish Catholic vigilantes in Boston that has a 23 % score on Rotten Tomatoes, have been returned to a few libraries in three totally different boroughs.

When New York’s public library system introduced final October that it might be eliminating all late fines, its objective was to get books and other people again to town’s almost 100 branches and analysis facilities after a yr and a half of restricted hours and entry.

The objective was achieved: A wave of returned overdue supplies got here crashing in, accompanied by a wholesome improve (between 9 and 15 %, relying on the borough) of returning guests.

Since final fall, greater than 21,000 overdue or misplaced gadgets have been returned in Manhattan, some so previous that they have been now not within the library’s system. About 51,000 gadgets have been returned in Brooklyn between Oct. 6 by way of the top of February. And greater than 16,000 have been returned in Queens. (Libraries are nonetheless charging alternative charges for misplaced books.)

Some books have been checked out so way back that they needed to be returned to totally different addresses. In December, Flushing Library in Queens acquired a bundle containing “Goodbye, Mr. Chips,” a novella by the English novelist James Hilton, that had been checked out in July 1970 from an tackle that’s now related to a buying plaza.

Billy Parrott, who runs the Stavros Niarchos Basis Library in Midtown, town’s largest circulating department, mentioned that the majority overdue gadgets are returned by mail or ebook drop, quite than in particular person. This is sensible: Late books is usually a supply of disgrace. However librarians insist they aren’t judging.

“We simply care concerning the books,” mentioned Mr. Parrott, who has labored for the N.Y.P.L. since 2004.

Earlier than the change in coverage, New York Metropolis’s public libraries had charged overdue fines for the reason that late 1800s. Early on, the speed was 1 cent per day. In 1954, it elevated to 2 cents, then 5 cents in 1959. The system’s most up-to-date price was 25 cents a day in New York Metropolis (aside from Brooklyn, the place it was 15 cents) for many supplies, 10 cents a day for kids’s books and a few {dollars} a day for DVDs. (Fines have been decrease for patrons ages 65 and up and people with disabilities.)

After 30 days, a ebook could be deemed misplaced and a alternative price could be charged. Anybody owing $15 or extra in charges could be blocked from testing supplies. In 2019, the system collected greater than $3 million in late charges, in line with Angela Montefinise, the library’s vp of communications and advertising. .

When Tony Marx joined the library system as president in 2011, it was his mission, he mentioned, to get rid of fines for good. Amnesty packages have been put in place and, in Brooklyn, a examine was carried out on the effectiveness of fines and the boundaries that patrons confronted in returning books.

Then, in 2017, the general public library in Nashville eradicated fines, and people in Chicago, Dallas and San Francisco adopted two years later. It wasn’t till the pandemic hit, and fines have been briefly suspended in New York, that Mr. Marx noticed a transparent alternative to alter town’s system completely.

“We discovered that we may regulate our funds to do every little thing we wanted to do and canopy the misplaced income, as a result of we’re not within the revenue-generating enterprise,” Mr. Marx, a former president of Amherst School, mentioned in an interview. “We’re not within the fine-collection enterprise. We’re within the encouraging-to-read-and-learn enterprise, and we have been getting in our personal means.”

For some metropolis residents, the fines had been notably discouraging. Dominique Gomillion mentioned she stopped going to her library in Jamaica, Queens, after books she had taken out for her 8-year-old daughter, Ariel, left her with greater than $50 in late charges — a considerable sum for her as a single dad or mum.

“It’s simply me and her,” Ms. Gomillion, a 32-year-old supervisor at UPS, mentioned in a telephone interview. “There’s not likely a lot different help that we’ve.”

A number of months in the past, Ms. Gomillion tried one other library, the South Hollis department, to see if she may clear her identify.

“I used to be already able to put the books again,” she mentioned. “After which Reggie got here, the librarian, and he was like, ‘I obtained one thing higher for you.’ After which he was like, ‘There aren’t any late charges anymore.’”

Ms. Montefinise recalled one patron at a department in Dongan Hills, Staten Island who, upon returning some late kids’s books, couldn’t consider the information and requested for a receipt to indicate his spouse as proof.

“I can’t inform you how stressed these fines made our prospects,” mentioned Tienya Smith, a librarian who runs the department in Lengthy Island Metropolis, Queens. “Not having these charges erases all of that.”