>Some Sad News from News-Daily.com – Jonesboro,GA – where More than 28,000 items a year are stolen from the Clayton County libraries.
“Three and a half percent of everything checked out is kept out more than 180 days, which means they are probably not going to come back,” said Carol Stewart, director of the Clayton County Library System.
Stewart said the following are some of the most stolen books: The Harry Potter books, “A Child Called It” by Dave Pelzer, “A Day Late and a Dollar Short” by Terry McMillan, “What To Expect in the First Year” By Arlene Eisenberg, and “I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings” by Maya Angelou.
Try Something New
Their fines are pretty low.
Maybe they should advertise that they would rather have the books returned late and have a period of time when people can return late items and not pay any fines. I find that patrons are sometimes embarrassed to return things late but when I stress that we would rather have the item back than the money, I find that they are more motivated to return items or to find them.
Amnesty
Do places ever try having a set period (i.e. a particular week each year) be an amnesty period for returning items? I can see some people appreciating that, but I can also see people abusing it and just hanging onto stuff for months until the amnesty period comes. I know one library I went to had a grace period where you could return stuff without paying a fine, but the fine still accrued during the grace period. Turning an item in 2 days after the grace period ended would still be a 7-day fine.