Kelly, although I am a high school librarian, I understand your
frustration with overdues.
I was reading an older thread about late fines just last night
and it's an issue that I am
interested in. How do we get our books back on time - or at all
without wasting too
much precious time chasing after our students, sometimes even long
after they've left
our school! At our school we tell the students we charge 10 cents a
day, but when they
bring us the book we only charge them half but we still have an
incredible amount of
books overdue each week. I found it interesting in my research that
one librarian stopped
charging late fines altogether and didn't see any difference in the
number of late books.
This leads me to wonder if I could save some time and grief haranging
students for
money owed and be able to focus on other services we provide in the
library.
One idea that was suggested was to have a weekly draw -
students would fill out a ballot
when they signed out a book and if their name was drawn they would
win the prize on the
condition that they had no lates or fines on their record. I like
the idea of thinking of
incentives rather than punishments for returning books. If anyone
has any other positive
ways to get their books back, I'd love to hear about them. Just an
aside, when I was living
in Japan, I brought my books back late and expected to pay a late
charge - they didn't know
what I was talking about, they don't charge fines at the public
library! I'd be interested in
finding out their return rates! (They would probably put us to shame!)
Cheers,
Pamela Roberts Griffith, Teacher and Librarian
Rosedale Heights SA, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Pamelarob@Hotmail.com
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