Fine free! Newton Public Library no longer charging youth for overdue books

Newton Public Library is no longer going to charge children and teens overdue fines for late books, children’s DVDs and STEM kits.

In a press release July 13, the library staff and its board of trustees announced that overdue fines go against the Newton Public Library’s mission statement: “A community resource encouraging lifelong learning.” These fines are a hindrance to its mission and “are not worth denying access to library services” for youth.

Which means children’s and teen collection items that become overdue can be brought back to the book-drop or circulation desk with no penalty.

Currently, the checkout system at Newton Public Library notifies patrons of when books are due. The library will continue to notify patrons via email three days before the due date, three days and 14 days after the due date and when an overdue item is billed to a patron’s account at 60 days past due.

If an account has old fines on children/teen materials, customers are encouraged to visit the library to update their account and ask for the fines to be waived.

However, fees on lost materials cannot be waived.

All other items in the library’s collection have a built-in three-day grace period and generate a $0.20 per day fine after three days until returned. So if patrons return their overdue items within the three days of the due date, no fine will occur. But this does exclude library equipment.

Newton Library Director Nicole Terry hopes removing the fines on children and teen materials will welcome back patrons whose cards were blocked due to overdue fines, and possibly entice new patrons to the library “because the fear and stigma of overdue fines is eliminated” on its heavily used collections.

“Fines disproportionately affect children, teens and low-income families and create barriers to using library services. We are hoping that by eliminating fines on children and teen materials we see more use of the collections, more library card registrations for teens and children and happier patrons overall,” she said.

Eliminating fines fosters more goodwill towards the library and towards staff working in the library. Staff members are here to serve the community, not shame them for returning a book a few days late, Terry added. The library director also said many libraries are going fine free, including many in the small towns of Jasper County.

Less than one percent of the library’s revenue comes from overdue dines. Terry said the Newton Public Library wanted to be on the forefront of the “fine free wave” and not be seen as holding on to the belief that fines encourage items to be returned. If anything, fines discourage patrons from re-visiting the library.

“By removing fines from our youngest reader’s items, we are setting up a positive interaction between the library and individual that will hopefully last a lifetime,” Terry said. “The library is committed to making our library as accessible as possible to our community, to upholding our mission statement of encouraging lifelong learning and to fostering positive interactions within the community.”