Book too late? Then no fines at more and more libraries

Forgetting to hand in a book for weeks no longer costs extra money at many libraries. More than half of the libraries in the Netherlands have abolished the fine in some form. At more than 30 percent of the libraries you no longer pay a fine at all.

In addition, more than a quarter of the libraries do not allow some of their members to pay fines, for example children or people with a plus subscription, according to a survey. inventory.

Librarian Mark Deckers collected the numbers. He has been following the rise of fine-free libraries for years. “Books also just come back to the library if no fines are given,” he says.

In 2014, the first libraries started abolishing the fines. In recent years, more and more have been added. The library in Zutphen, among others, abandoned the fines. There it used to cost 20 cents per day per book that was returned too late, with a maximum of 50 euros.

“There are families, especially here in Zutphen, who are not having an easy time financially. They sometimes had to deal with high fines, especially if they have several children who returned books too late,” says Barbara Deus of library organization BIJ de Bieb.

“Sometimes they stopped coming to avoid having to pay the fines. We don’t want that, because we really want everyone to continue to visit us.”

Even without the coercion of the fines, most books are still handed in. “So far we just get all the books back. Previously, books were sometimes stolen when people were blocked because of the high fines. That is no longer the case,” says Deus.

If a book has not been returned for months, an e-mail will be sent with the request to return the book. If someone still does not return the book, they will receive a proposal to buy the book.

The fines also generate income. That’s why some libraries stick to the fines. “It must be possible within the budget, but we can now manage without that income,” says Deus. “We have also linked a campaign to it and we have gained more members as a result.”

Deckers estimates that libraries still earn about 10 million euros annually from the fines. “It is 2 to 3 percent of the budget, and libraries can come up with a solution for that.”

In recent years, some schools have also stopped charging fines for students who return borrowed books too late.

Still, library fines are being phased out less quickly than Deckers had expected. In 2017, he predicted that all libraries would be fine-free this year. So that did not happen.

“Libraries haven’t had an easy time with a lot of budget cuts. Sometimes they’ve had other priorities,” says Deckers. He expects that fines will be waived in more places in the near future.