Comment on A Kentucky church is urging its members to remove books from the Shelby Public Library by checking them out and never returning them

reddig33@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

• papalonian@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Also your library will just buy more copies. Which means your taxes will go up to pay for the missing books.

  Lolno. Libraries are getting funds cut. They will not buy a new copy, it will become unavailable, then those that would go to a library to borrow it no longer can, so they find it online, and the right can say “see? Nobody goes to libraries anyways”.

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  • lepinkainen@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Our libraries send an invoice to the people who have unpaid dues.

    And they can’t loan anything before the dues have been paid.

    Might even go to collections if you’re enough of an ass

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    • papalonian@lemmy.world ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Our libraries have mostly moved away from this model. I may have some details mixed up but I believe there was a study done that showed books were more likely to be returned without the late fee than with a fee.

      Basically people will feel ashamed or embarrassed to return a book so late (or maybe in extreme cases cannot easily afford the couple dollars) so they end up stealing the book and never returning it. So now the library has to buy a $10 book because someone couldn’t pay the $5 late fee. It just makes more sense in the long run to let people bring the book back late without penalty vs not bring it back at all in fear of a fee.

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      • mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        Late fees have largely been abandoned, yes. But lost book fees are still widely in use. They’ll just lock your account until you either return the book or pay for a replacement.

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