Excessive library fees | Letters | Summerville Journal Scene

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Excessive library fees

Published Tuesday, January 10, 2012 1:46 PM

By Mark Musselman
Summerville Journal Scene ®

(Editor’s note: The following letter was sent to Dr. Frank Bruno, Dorchester County Library Director, and copied to The Summerville Journal Scene.)

Dear Dr. Bruno,

My teenage daughter forgot to return her six books and received a $48 fine. I understand that fines encourage patrons to return books, but excessive fines discourage patrons from ever entering the library lest they make a costly mistake.

When borrowing hundreds of books a year, a time will come when a due date is missed. To avoid this and weeks of accumulated fines, our family has signed up for the e-mail notification service offered by the library. The library promises to send an e-mail three days prior to the due date. In this case, my daughter and my wife (tied to daughter’s account) did not receive the early warning e-mail. Nor did either receive and e-mail notification at any time during the month after the due date.

After a month, my daughter realized her error on her own.

Furthermore, my daughter and wife did not receive notification that the overdue fines had prompted the library to involve a collection agency. For the collection agency’s service, my daughter was charged $10. However, the collection agency never contacted us via e-mail, phone or the United States Postal Service. What service did they provide that warranted the additional $10?

On one hand we have schools encouraging children to read and on the other hand we have the public library capitalizing on the inevitability that children will forget the due date of their borrowed books. Fines are expected and budgets are tight, but demanding half of a child’s Christmas gift cash is Grinch-like when the entire issue could have been prevented with the promised e-mail reminder or minimized with any type of notification after the due date.

Sincerely

Mark Musselman

Summerville

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