One thing that surprised me in discussions of the library charging for holds that aren't picked up is the number of people who are annoyed not just by people who don't pick up their holds, but by people who pick up their holds on the last day before they expire, or keep library materials check out right up until the due date.
I don't consider this a problem myself and I don't know if the library considers it a problem, but nevertheless my shower gave me an idea to address it:
What if libraries gave patrons credit for holds picked up early or books returned early? For example, using amounts that make the math easy and might not necessarily be the optimal ratio, suppose they credit one cent to your account for every day before the deadline that you either pick up a hold or return an item. Late fines are currently 10 cents a day, so this would mean that if you're a cumulative total of 10 days early in circulating your material, that will cancel out one day's late fine.
The big question here is whether circulating material faster is more important to the libraries than the revenue generated by fines. I don't know the answer to that question.
The other question is whether this would motivate people to game the system by taking out material they don't want and returning it right away. This incentive could be partially mitigated by allowing the credits to only offset future fines and you still have to pay fines already incurred. People could still game the system, but how many people are organized enough to game the system in anticipation of future late fines but not organized enough to get their books back in time? I don't know the answer to that question.
But if it turns out it actually is important for the library to encourage faster circulation of materials, this could be a starting point for brainstorming.
2 comments:
Given that part of what determines library budgets is their actual usage records (largely detemined by circulation numbers), speeding up the circulation of high-demand items could at least theoretically totally offset the lost income from this kind of credit. It's a really cool idea, actually!
Interesting, I didn't know circulation affected budget what with all the talk in the news lately of cutting library budgets by arbitrary amounts. If that's the case, then people gaming the system by taking a bunch of stuff out and returning it right away would actually be helpful.
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