I (Elizabeth Davies) have a confession to make: There’s an overdue library book under my bed.
If you are my librarian, that confession doesn’t come as any surprise. In fact, I’m fairly certain the library is thinking of naming its next addition, “The Elizabeth Davies Overdue Fine Center.”
It’s not that I intend to be delinquent, of course. But I seem to have trouble getting through an entire book in just two weeks. I always think I can do it, but since having children, I consistently find myself re-reading the same paragraph over and over again. It seems to take days to turn the page.
It’s just a darned good thing that I don’t live in Independence, Iowa. That’s where a 39-year-old woman was arrested on a charge of failing to return a library book over the course of nine months. Ironically, the $14 book was “The Freedom Writers Diary” — and it cost the library patron $250 to free herself from jail.
Hopefully, the threat of being jailed for that book under the bed won’t keep people out of libraries. It’s only in recent years that I found out what awesome places libraries are. Growing up, we lived outside the city limits so we didn’t qualify for a free library card. Thus, I only really thought of the library as a place to do research for homework. More from TH Online.
That is a lie
The patron was not jailed for not returning a book. The patron was jailed for ignoring an order of the Court. She was summoned on a criminal complaint under state law for failure to return the library’s property – a theft by conversion. She failed to appear and was arrested on a warrant.
I doubt that the idea that one could be jailed for not returning library property will keep anyone but theives out of the library. Most patrons would applaud the enforcement of existing state law against other patrons who steal books they might wish to borrow. Have you ever had a hold on a book that the previous borrower did not return?
Renew the darn book already
Whenever someone writes about their overdue books that they can’t read in just 2 weeks, I always wonder why they don’t renew the book. I would think that the book should be able to be renewed at least once. If you still can’t find the time to read it, return it and note the title for later when you do have time.
that was me
I forgot to log in
“Everything is for the best in this best of all possible worlds”
-Candide by Voltaire