NYPL Announcement: The Library Is Eliminating Fines Tony Marx, NYPL President: The New York Public Library is proud to announce a major policy shift: as of today and moving forward, we will no longer charge late fines on overdue circulating materials. In addition, we have cleared all... www.dandy.cat

@dandycat This is great! I’ve just emailed our public library and proposed this for them.

@odd Good going! I hope they'll make the kind and right choice.

@Pilchuck @odd Couldn't have been, right? And I don't know how it is for all libraries, but it's clear in this case that the money they were bringing in from the fines may not have been all that considerable compared to their other revenue sources.

@dandycat That's what all the librarians here said when our local system eliminated late fees earlier this year. The money brought in by the fines was insignificant, and only served to deter people (esp. lower-income folks) from using the library. They also said the fines had little effect on whether people returned books on time.