LIBRARY MANAGEMENT COUNCIL
December 15, 2003

Absent: Frances Lynch, Deborah Sommer, Celia Walker

Attendees from CAG: Chris Benda (Peabody), Ann Carey (Biomedical), Rodger Coleman (Music), Sue Davis (Technical Services), Clint Grantham (Annex), Michael Jackson (Law), Anne Martin (LITS), Scott McDermott (Divinity), Dale Poulter (LITS), Debra Stevens (Science & Engineering), Marie Swearingen (Management), Janet Thomason (Central).

Fines Proposal: Bill Hook
This LMC meeting was held jointly with the CAG members to further the LMC discussion of fines on December 1, 2003. The LMC meeting on December 1 concluded with the decision to extend the loan period to a minimum of 28 days for all patrons and to allow for the number of renewals to increase by one. No consensus was reached on the fines or on the grace period, and those points were deferred to this joint meeting.

Bill Hook said the previous conversation in LMC was more about loan periods and recalls, rather than discussing fines. He observed that there does not seem to be a strong push towards changing fines, as opposed to how best to service our patrons with loan periods and recalls. Paul Gherman said the SQIT committee brought up the issue because fines are seen as punitive. He said the Library strives for getting the right person the right materials at the right time and we use fines to make that happen. Rodger Coleman said we cannot assume the patron does not want the book because they do not recall it. Janet Thomason said that less than 500 books were recalled per month. Other services have already been added ? such as e-mail notifications to patrons and the ability to renew a book online. Janet said complaints regarding fines were around 2 per month at Central. Marshall Breeding asked if complaints were higher prior to those services being established. Janet said yes and that notices to patrons have significantly dropped the amount of fines that are collected by around 50%.

Scott McDermott stated that Divinity does not receive very many complaints, but a lot of staff time is used to collect the fines from patrons. If staff did not have to spend so much time on this, they could focus on other aspects of the LibQual survey and customer service improvements. Janet Thomason said by increasing the patron borrowing time, this can free up staff time.

Sherre Harrington said she researched library literature and could not find any evidence to support that fines work as a method to get books back from patrons. Rodger Coleman asked if fines do not have any effect, why have any fines on reserve or recalled items? He said he does not think we want to do this, but why have fines at all? Dale Poulter asked what percentage of overdue fines reached their maximum fine. Bill Hook stated that we do not know because the data currently does not show this.

Marie Swearingen stated that consistency is the key word. Many libraries have different forgiveness methods for fines. She used the Management Library as an example; Management almost always forgives fines, whereby other libraries may not. Anne Martin said between libraries for undergraduates and graduates, the consistencies can be difficult and how do we be consistent for each group? Marie stated Owen’s Dean does not want their students to be charged fines, since they are paying a lot for graduate school tuition.

Sherre Harrington asked what is the outcome we want to achieve, how much borrowing time should be allowed, and how much money do we feel we should collect for late items? Sherre said she remembers that LMC and CAG came to an agreement on this for those patrons unwilling to return the book(s). Bill Hook said it was 30 days plus a $15.00 billing fee, but said we never really settled on this amount. He stated that the CAG proposal is a good incremental step to see how much work is involved for staff members.

Paul Gherman said this is a customer service issue on one level regarding consistency and complacency. He said the majority of patrons comply when sent the reminder notification. On another level, we have abusers that consistently incur fines and they need penalties. We should be able to use the established automated system to identify the abusers and hit them hard with a penalty. Janet Thomason said that would help, and in addition we could modify the tone of the patron notices to be more customer service oriented or friendly (i.e. using “late fees” instead of “fines”).

Sherre Harrington commented that what we really want is the book back and that the focus is not really the dollar amount of the fine collected. Scott McDermott said an effective method for him was to call the patron. He said he would like to see circulation staff getting out of the business of “nickel and dime-ing” people and how do we go about freeing ourselves from that role? He said the beauty of the CAG proposal was a way to do that.

Paul asked if there were any objections to the Library adopting a 28-day grace period. Sherre said she agreed if there is consistency throughout the Library system. She said LMC needs to make a commitment to actually charge the fines or they might as well say Library X is not going to charge fines at all.

Dennis Clark asked if we set this up now, will it reduce staff time and is this what we will be measuring? Janet Thomason said we will also be able to measure how many overdue notices go out, how many bills, etc. Bill Hook asked if we can measure how many 1st, 2nd and 3rd notices have gone out in 2003 in order to have a comparison between this year and last.

Bill Hook suggested there be a CAG subcommittee established to look into the ancillary circulation issues surrounding these changes. LMC agreed that on January 1, 2004, the loan period would be extended to 28 days for all patrons and to allow for the number of renewals to increase by one. Beginning summer 2004, the committees agreed that a 28-day grace period would be added.

There were no announcements. The next LMC meeting would be held on January 5, 2004.