Lower Mainland librarians, including those in Burnaby, are keeping an eye on Whistler.
No, it’s not to figure out when they’ll be able to hit the ski slopes this winter. It’s to watch what happens as the result of the Whistler Public Library dumping late fees and fines entirely to make residents more comfortable about borrowing books and other materials. It’s slippery a slope, however, the Burnaby Public Library (BPL) isn’t likely to slide down. At least not yet.
Burnaby deputy chief librarian Deb Thomas said she wasn’t totally surprised by Whistler’s decision since it’s been tried at many libraries in the United States, but bringing it to Burnaby might not be practical.
Like those libraries, the BPL has been trying to find ways to reduce barriers for access to its collections. In the spring of 2016, it chopped the late fee for teen books by a third. Teens used to be charged at the adult rate of 30 cents a day. Now it’s the child rate of 10 cents a day up to a maximum of $1.
“We were finding teens in particular, for various reasons, ending up with overdue fines and just ceasing to borrow from us, so this was a way to help bring some back into the fold and not saddle them with big fines. We’re also looking at reducing our DVD fines per day in 2018,” said Thomas, who admitted it was too early to tell if the move has worked. “I wouldn’t say that we’re looking at getting rid of fines all together. At this point we still see them as a way to encourage people to return them on time, to make sure those collections are there for other people to borrow.
“It is also a source of revenue so it isn’t something – you just can’t get rid of it overnight in a system our size or the size of the Vancouver Public Library. Whistler is much smaller, it’s a single branch system. It’s a much smaller amount of money that we’re talking about. It was a bold move on their part, and I certainly applaud them in doing it. I think it would have to be a much more gradual process from us.”
Thomas said the revenue from fines and fees, which include lost and damaged charges, was nearly $320,000 in 2016. Any decision to eliminate late fees would be made by the library board which consists of community members who are open to reducing barriers to access, she added.
“(But) there is a sentiment that the fines are still a helpful deterrent to people so they don’t keep the books forever. We’ll see what happens in Whistler. We don’t know yet. They’ve just done it,” said Thomas. “In a smaller community everybody knows everybody. If you’ve taken off with a whole bunch of books and haven’t returned them it’s a little more likely there’s going to be some contact there than there would in a larger urban system.”
Vancouver chief librarian Sandra Singh told the CBC the library is not making decreasing fines a priority because they bring in about $625,000, about 1.3 per cent of the library’s annual revenue. The CBC reported several Chicago suburbs had increased library use after dumping the fees, but in Windsor, Ont., they were reinstated because of a $200,000 loss in annual revenue.
