1975-1980 - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

GRAHAM PUBLIC LIBRARY, 1100 Cherry Graham,Texas 76046 shoe. ani $494M O July 3, 1978 John P. Hastings Director of Library Services Paris Public Library 326 South Main Paris, Texas 75460 Dear Mr. Hastings: In response to your letter of June 29th concerning no -fine policies, I hope I can be of some little help. I am enclosing a copy of a letter which was sent out to all Graham citizens (with city water bills), and also given out to library patrons at the check -out desk. The policy of no -fines was given a year -long trial. It was begun before I came by my predecessor. At the end of the year, we rescinded the no =fine policy and went back to charging fines. The no -fine policy was so abused by the patrons, and we had so much trouble getting the materials back at all, let alone on time, that we gave it up as a bad deal. Regardless of what you may have read or learned in library school, in my opinion, a no -fine policy will do nothing to create good will, nor will it -help the poor or underprivileged to obtain better library service. It will only serve to cause materials to remain overdue longer. While the fines we charge do very little to insure books are returned on time (we have roughly the same amount of materials overdue with fines as we did without), it does seem that they are not kept out quite so long overdue as they were with the no -fine policy. While it would be good to be able to not charge fines, unfor- tunately this is not the best of all possible worlds, and we are dealing with people, who like all of us are at times for- getful, uncaring, and downright devious. Therefore, I would personally recommend against a no -fine policy. Although it may not be as altruistic as we would like to be, our fines. enable us to purchase more library materials than we would other- wise be able to do, since we get to retain the fine money. At present, our fines of 50 per day per item add'up to about $120 monthly,