 Good morning and welcome to this week's edition of Encompass Live. I'm your host, Christa Porter here at the Nebraska Library Commission. Encompass Live is the commission's weekly webinar series where we cover a variety of topics that may be of interest to libraries. We broadcast the show live every Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. central time. But if you're unable to join us on Wednesdays, that's okay. We do record the show every week and is then posted to our website later so you can watch it at your convenience. And at the end of today's show, I'll show you on our website where you can access all of our archives. Both the live show and the recordings are free and open to anyone to watch. So please do share with your friends, family, neighbors, colleagues, anyone you think might be interested in any of the topics we have on the show. I'm here in Nebraska. For those of you not aware, the Nebraska Library Commission is the state agency for libraries. And this is for all libraries in the state, all types. So you will find things on our show that are for public libraries, K-12 schools, academic universities, correction facilities, museums, anything that has a library we would potentially do something for. Really our only criteria for the show is that it's something to do with library. So it could be book reviews, mini-training sessions, demos of services and products. Cool things that libraries are doing out there that we share for them. Having people on the show, things that we think libraries should be doing. Sometimes some of our shows are more Nebraska-centric, things that we hear at the Library Commission of providing us services. But sometimes they're more national or even internationally interesting. As this morning, as we noticed, we've got some people today who did register from Canada. So thank you for joining us. Welcome to our show. We do, as I said, sometimes have sessions done by the Nebraska Library Commission staff, but we also bring in guest speakers as we have this morning. And today we have Beth and Meg, and I'm going to have you guys introduce yourself and talk about who you all are and what up. But they've been doing a lot of talk about a huge topic in libraries, and it's even gotten into the mainstream news, too, beyond the library world. Overdue finds what libraries are doing with eliminating those. So I'm just going to hand over to you guys to take it away and tell us about how we all can do this. No question. Well, good morning. Thanks everyone for joining us today. I'm Beth Christ, Youth and Family Services Consultant at the Colorado State Library in Denver. And I'm Meg DePriest, and I used to work with Beth at the College State Library. Right now I live in California. And I do some consulting work for the California State Library, mostly on the public, annual public library survey. And I also just, in my spare time, track libraries dropping finds. And we're actually going to bow out of the webcam here and just let you focus on the slides in our voices. So we're going to, we liked meeting you, but we're going to bow out here just visually. Yeah. Sorry, I'm trying to, there we go. Okay. There we go. Sorry about that. I was trying to advance the slides. Wasn't quite working for me there. So we got started, Meg and I got started on this topic of eliminating finds when we were working on our spell program, which stands for Supporting Parents in Early Literacy through Libraries. This was a grant funded program funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services. And the, we had two grants actually. So this goes back into, we started out in 2011 and we, we had the first grant where we were really focusing on finding out how libraries can, excuse me, best empower low income parents of, with children who are birthed through three with to incorporate early literacy habits into their daily lives. And so we asked them questions through surveys and focus groups, such as what are your barriers to using the library? What are your barriers to reading daily with your children and doing other early literacy activities? And, you know, we got a lot of responses like that. Of course, transportation is, is often an issue. And some other problems like hours open and things like that. But one of the things that they mentioned was overdue finds and fees. And we heard some really heartbreaking stories, particularly in the focus groups. We had one parent say, well, I, I love to bring my kids to the library, but we don't check out books because I'm, I'm afraid we wouldn't be able to get back to the library in time to return them or they might get lost or damaged and we can't afford finds and fees. And then another mother right after that said, oh, we love to check out books library. We always do that. And as soon as I get home, I put them high up on a shelf so that the kids can't touch them and because they might damage them or get them lost. And even when I'm reading to them, I don't, I don't let them touch the books. And so, of course, this is exactly the opposite thing we want to happen. Right? We want that's heartbreaking to hear. It is. It's totally heartbreaking. So this really moved us to really look at this issue more. And through the spell program, this slide here is of the Montrose Public Library. They were one of the partners in our grant. And so they had their bookmobile and they took it to through the grant. They took it to a low income or a child care center in a low income neighborhood. And just on the bookmobile, not in the library at the time, but at the bookmobile, they did eliminate fines and even waived fines and for anyone using the bookmobile because they really wanted to get those kids there using the library and the families. So they would come pick up and drop off times, which is a great outreach program, right? You're going when the families are there and making it extremely convenient for them. And so the one story they told was just so moving. The librarian heard a little girl tell her mother she wanted to go on the bookmobile. And mom said, oh, I'm sorry. We can't go. We have too many fines and we can't afford to pay them. And so our cards are blocked. We can't check anything out. And the librarian was able to say, no, please come. We'll waive all your fines. We want you to use the library again. And so they used the bookmobile that day. And then the family started coming back into the library. So this can really be a powerful, powerful topic, right? Very moving stuff. And so we have a couple of real life quotes from patrons about how they've been affected by fines. And again, it really shows, really speaks to how a lot of people really cannot just get to the library regularly. And how there's also a shame that is associated with having overdue books and when it is often not really within people's ability to return them in a timely manner. So here's another one. So it's very moving stuff. And as libraries have been going fine free, they've found too that people in lower income neighborhoods do tend to have higher fines. And going along with that, they have more people with cards blocked in those neighborhoods proportionately more. Like we see here in this chart from the San Francisco Public Library, they kept really great data here when they weren't fine free recently. But a lot of other libraries have found similar things like Seattle, St. Paul and Westminster, Colorado and many others. We find this over and over again that fines really do disproportionately affect lower income communities and also it's just a punitive fine. So that I'm going to turn it over to Meg to talk about the research. Thanks Beth. While I was working on the SPELC project, I got the task of diving into our professions research and publications to discover what we've been talking about with fines, how they work, if they work, whether or not others had uncovered this phenomenon of community members avoiding borrowing because of them. That dive into the research resulted in the College State Library's white paper advocating for the elimination of fines and fees on children's materials. I looked for discussions in the profession about late fines and I found editorials and articles going back decades with many questioning the policy, some supporting it. The age old thought that a late fine will teach people's responsibility appears throughout the literature with folks debating whether or not it is actually the library's role to teach responsibility regardless of whether fines work or not. And of course throughout the years, librarians have been concerned about making the library accessible to members of our community who need us most. So the traditional commonly held belief is that fines function to provide equal access to materials by encouraging patrons sense of civic responsibility. If everyone turns their stuff in on time and they don't damage the library materials then people waiting in line can access them in a timely manner. Excuse me. And this is an assumption that members of our community in our profession have held for decades and they have used you are most certainly going to encounter in your community or within your governing entity or maybe even with your colleagues. We opted to get this paper out there because I was able to find very few studies and research that even tested the notion that charging fines, late fines results in a better on time return rate for materials. There weren't a lot of studies in the literature but I found a few interesting ones. In three surveys in North Carolina libraries conducted between 1983 and 1991 researchers compared circulation statistics of libraries with different overdue policies and this research revealed no significant difference in the overdue rates of libraries that charged overdue fines and those that didn't. Another surprising fact charging nominal fines did not affect the return rate of materials but the existence of large fines did. So your nickels, dimes and quarters are not effective in encouraging people to get things back to the library on time. Other researchers tested whether or not rewards such as gift cards would improve late turn rates and they had no effect either. So since this white paper was published, go ahead with the next slide, Beth. Beth and I have continued to research and explore this topic sometimes rather obsessively in my case. I love this stuff and when I learned that there are libraries out there that have never charged late fines, I reached out to learn more from them. When I talked to the folks at Fairbanks North Star Borough Libraries in Alaska, they reported that their replacement costs are similar to libraries that do charge fines. Their library functions smoothly without this policy and they're just glad not to have to waste staff time collecting fines. And then the Saginaw Chippewa Tribal Library in Michigan has never charged late fines. What's neat about this library is it's in a shared system with some local public libraries that do charge fines. And so the director there was able to access the late return rate for her library and the others that serve the community. And her library's late return rate, which was 13%, was identical to the other libraries in the community that do charge fines. And she reported that their hold fulfillment rates were very similar as well. So now next slide. I'm going to share some statistics with you from libraries that have recently in the past few years changed their policies. If you haven't figured out already, Beth is really good with the stories and I love the data and we work really well together because when you advocate, you need both. You're getting the numbers from me. So I want to share some statistics and I want to emphasize a few trends. First, nothing bad is happening at these libraries. And this is just a few examples. Gleason Library in Massachusetts reported no discernible district difference in the time people were keeping materials. High Plains Library District in Colorado reported 95% of their materials coming back on time after the policy change. And they had no increase in patron disappoints. So that would be when someone is waiting for a book and it's not coming back on time. Dayton Metro Library reported fewer items returning late after the policy was implemented. And the second thing we're seeing is there are positive results when libraries eliminate overdue fines. And just again, a few examples. We've got St. Paul who reported that their circulation rose for the first time in years after they dropped late fines. 42,000 people with blocked cards returned to borrow items. And two libraries in low income areas of the city saw circulation increase by 13 and 15% respectively. Salt Lake had 3.5% more borrowers and their circulation went up 16% after the policy change. San Rafael in Northern California reported an increase of 39% in youth borrowers when they dropped fines on children's materials. And then Cleveland Heights had more items come back in that first year after late fines. So in 2017, they had $94,000 worth of materials return. And in 2018, after they dropped that policy, $186,000 worth of materials were returned. And on the next slide, another thing we're seeing over and over again has to do with the budget. People worry that eliminating fines will remove a revenue stream from library's budgets. Overdue fines usually make up a very small amount of a library's budget, typically less than 1%. Add to that the often overlooked cost required to collect those dimes and quarters and the actual revenue generated is very small. Between staff time, mailing overdue notices, fees for processing credit card payments and collection agency fees. It turns out that much less revenue is collected than it might appear. Some libraries have been carefully tracking revenue from fines before and after eliminating them. And they found that collecting fines is actually cost neutral or even cost more than the revenue coming in. And again, I gave you a few examples here. High planes, theirs was revenue neutral. They were spending as much as they were collecting. St. Paul has an interesting point, and I've seen this with other libraries as well. Overdue fines they were collecting were decreasing steadily. I think some of that is the introduction of auto renewal. And it just wasn't a steady reliable funding stream. And I love San Diego's. They were basically spending a million dollars to collect $700,000 in fines. And then similarly in Australia, in Victoria, Casey Cardinia, they did their math and figured out they were basically losing $5,000 in collecting late fines. So those are the numbers and I'm going to toss this back to Beth. Meg, I just wanted to ask about the budget issue there. That is something I'd seen asked about and discussed online in some groups, librarians. And someone did ask in one library conversation I saw, how did you recoup all the revenue lost? And even on this, just people chatting online, the 99% of them said it's not a major part of our budget. It never been a major part. And honestly, some of the comments also said, honestly, it should not be considered part of a major part of your budget. Really exactly just said about St. Paul. It's not a steady and reliable income at all. You wouldn't don't want to make that to be an important part of your budget because what if it changes drastically suddenly for some reason and then you're really in trouble? Right. And it doesn't really make budget is a really bad idea. And it doesn't really make sense to have a line item be based on people misbehaving or breaking a rule. And you're trying to fix that misbehavior or breaking a rule by charging fines. It's kind of a circular. It doesn't make sense. And the numbers don't add up. Yeah. And I'll throw in here that there was a library journal study done in I think 2017 survey and about overdue fines. And they found that of the respondents, the fines collected was generally were on average 1% of the operating budgets. And that was across libraries. So no matter what your what size communities they were, what their budget was, it still tended to be about 1%. So very, very small. So this really has become a movement, which is really exciting. We are partnering, Megan and I are partnering with Andy Woodworth on this map. He created this map and we've been mainly magazine populating it and Andy as well when we find libraries that have gone fine free, at least partially. So this is the map of the US. We actually have a libraries from all over the world on the map. So there we have 363 libraries worldwide that are totally fine free and 153 that are partially fine free and to delve into that a little bit. And when library is partially fine free that usually means they're they've gone fine free on at least children's materials and sometimes children and young adult materials. And that is often a stepping stone. Sometimes libraries will try that as a pilot. They'll do that for a year, collect the data and then use that as a great example of why they should go find free on all materials. Partially fine free can also mean fine free on all books, but not media. So some libraries go in that direction too. So just to explain that a little bit. And if you your library or if you know of a library that is fine free, that's not on the map, please let us know we can add you. We would love to add you actually because this is also not a comprehensive list. This is just as we come across libraries that have recently gone fine free. We have not done any kind of extensive surveying on this. So this is this is definitely not comprehensive, but but it is a good snapshot and you can see it just keeps growing. We add to this list all the time and libraries are are just continuing to go find free more and more. And again, this is libraries of all sizes and all governing structures. So it really is across the board. It's very exciting movement and libraries can add themselves to correctly. They don't have to like contact you guys. Yeah, here don't look at the form here. Oh, great. Yes. Get yourself on the map if you're not already. Yeah, thank you. And here are some of the great headlines that are popping up across the country. Very exciting stuff. And we do keep updating this presentation as more and more libraries go fine free, but it is very exciting. And here you can see actually some examples of libraries that are going fine free for for kids or kids and teens. And again, you can also see the wide variety of sizes of libraries here. So it really is an exciting movement and we hope it will spread. And even the American Library Association is now recommending this to all. They passed a resolution in this January at the midwinter conference. And so this is their resolution on monetary library finds as a form of social inequity. And so this can be great. A great tool for you to use if you are advocating on behalf of your library and trying to get this passed in your community. You can say, well, look, even ALA recommends this. So this was very exciting to have happen. They did it a bit quietly. So we're trying to spread the word that this is this is out there and available for you to use in your in your advocacy work. And I should mention, too, as we're going through, we do have a list of all of these resources on the last couple of slides. And also we can post these. We have actually a resource page. And I don't know, Krista, can you can you post our slides? Yes, absolutely. Great. So we'll get either we hear we use slide share to post things or if you have somewhere where you post them, we can link to anything. But yes, afterwards, we'll have along with the recording will be. We'll have links to the links to the links to the free light for the website that you're showing. And then the slides as well available available to everybody afterwards. Excellent. So we'll make these available so you can you can access all of this. And so now we're this is sort of up to now been the why to get rid of fines. And now we're going to talk about how how you can advocate to get this done to whatever your governing body is, whether you're a library district and have a board, whether you are a municipal system and have to make the pitch to city council or other governing body. I know it varies across the country and and into Canada as well. So whatever your governing body is, you can use these these steps to make your pitch first gather statistics. Meg showed some great statistics earlier and really some key ones are to find out how many patrons are blocked due to fines. And if you do find a discrepancy and low income neighborhoods, definitely include that to and make the case for fines being an equity issue. And also, again, as Meg showed you how much money is brought in by fines versus how much it costs to collect fines. And the High Plains Library District and other libraries have done an estimation of of how much staff time it takes to collect fines. And I believe High Plains used 30 seconds per fine. Other libraries have used one minute. So that's a good formula for you to use if you count up the number of fines and multiply it by by one of those two figures to get staff time. And then also, again, as Meg pointed out, look at things like how much are you paying to mail overdue notices? How much are you paying in credit card fees for fines collection agency fees? So it really does cost a lot to collect nickels and quarters more than more than often more than people think. And then gather stories. We saw some great quotes earlier from real patrons who are affected by fines. So definitely take some time and we'll show you some more examples of that and then create talking points and debunk the myths. Again, the myths are generally that fines help people bring in materials faster, fines generate revenue for the library and fines teach responsibility. And these, you know, the research shows and recent libraries that have gone fine free have shown that that these are really myths that are not true. These are assumptions that we've been making for so many years that really just don't hold up in the research. And since so many years without any research to back it up. Absolutely. All it has ever been has just been assumptions. Yeah, absolutely. And it's been so great as these libraries go fine free. So many of them are keeping really detailed records. And so that is fantastic for the rest of us to use to make the case. We have an example here. This is from the Waverly Public Library in Iowa. They when they got rid of fines, they did collect collect their data and they found that this is from an infographic that they used in their case to get rid of fines. And I just took a snippet of it. And so they did calculate that about 1% of their annual budget comes from fines. So very small amount and that is the average. And so to show off Colorado, which has lots of dots on the fine free map, we're very glad because we're based in Colorado. So we had to show off a little bit, right? So this is from the Westminster Public Library. Westminster is a small city that's just a little northwest of Denver in one of the suburbs. And so here's a photo of it. And they have recently done, they're celebrating their 100 year anniversary this year, which is very exciting. And so they're doing this great thing to celebrate their 100 years. They're having 100 days of $100 off your fines for overdue materials. And at the end of this period, which ends shortly here in September, they will go find free, which is so exciting. So that's a nice way to roll it out. And they've also done a lot of detailed research. They found out that they take in about $70,000 a year in fines. And their overall budget is over a little over $3 million. And they have found, indeed, they have two branches and they found that in one of the branches, which is in a lower income neighborhood, that they do have a much higher percentage of overdue fines. So they have collected that as well. And they've really had one person on staff who's really been a strong champion for eliminating fines. And she has done a lot of research and she's taken it to the staff and really advocated all the way in every level of the library system, which is great. And so sometimes that helps to have a champion in your library to do that, to carry this forward and to keep it on everyone's radar. And so she was so enthusiastic and just really, really wanted to get this done and she has. So that's exciting. And I'm going to jump back in here. For the past couple of years, it's become my daily ritual to check my Google alerts and search Twitter for new announcements and read every local news article I can about libraries who have dropped late fines. It's always obvious to me when libraries and their leadership have done their homework and prepared their message as they announced the policy change. Local newspapers love to cover this subject and depending on the reporter, the pieces can be very light and positive or they can be a little more critical. Over and over, I've read director statements covering just what Beth and I have reviewed today. They've got it home to a nice packet of information covering the fact fines don't work. They cost money to collect and they harm the most vulnerable in our communities. There will always be people, reporters, online commenters who will ask about that whole teaching responsibility issue. There will always be naysayers, but your job is to make your message positive, compelling and convincing. Announcing this policy change will result in an immediate conversation with the community. So you need to be ready to answer their questions. I've added an example here because I think Fox River Valley libraries in Illinois did a really brave thing. They had a web page where they laid out their facts, discussed wanting to make the library more accessible. They had charts and graphs showing the budgetary implications. And at the very end of the page, they included a two question survey for community members. Again, I think this is really brave in this age where there's a lot of discussion online and from people. And I put a screenshot here of the first question. You can see that almost 80% supported them after reading through their information. And I put the link here and you're going to have access to information afterwards. I encourage you to visit that site and look at the individual responses. You could actually click there and see what community members said. And it's important to pay attention to the ones who are still not convinced. It helps you hone your side or your message. It'll help you prepare your response to the members of your community who aren't convinced. So be prepared for that conversation. Many, many, many times it goes over very well. But every once in a while, you've got a little more convincing you need to do. I'll send that back to you, Beth. Okay. So around the messaging, there are some libraries that have many libraries. Actually, they've done a really great job and they have so much information on their website. This is from the St. Paul Public Library. They have an amazing website all about eliminating their fines. It is really comprehensive. And one thing they created around this was this infographic. And it's a two-pager. This is the first page. I'll just give you a chance to look at it. But you see here this wonderful mix of data and stories. And we really find that both are critical. Some people are swayed more by statistics. Other people are swayed more by the stories. So if you provide both upfront, that can really appeal to a wider array of people. And again, when we're talking about appealing to people, that means everyone from your governing body, sometimes even your staff. You have to convince some people on your staff to get rid of fines. Your community, there will be pushback. We've seen this a lot. But again, the more data and the more stories you can provide upfront, the easier time you'll have to control that message. So here's page two of St. Paul's infographic. They've done a really nice job of the visuals here. It's colorful. There's not too much text. You're not reading and reading. They give data from other libraries that have already gone fine free. They are now fine free. Some of this was before they went fine free. So they didn't always have the data from their own library. So you can use data from libraries that have gone fine free. And so what we've done is we've created a template that you can use to make a similar kind of infographic. This again will be available to you. This is in PowerPoint format. So that hopefully it would be easy for everyone to get in there and customize it for your own. This is an example. We just used a generic your public library in our town. And so we have this. I couldn't fit it all onto the slide and make it legible. So there's a little bit more on the bottom. But again, this is all available to you. And this is the example. But we also have a template with like the blanks in there. So blank percent of card holders and then in the parentheses insert number here cannot check out material. So it's really it'll be really easy hopefully for you to customize this if you are looking to use a visual. So hopefully this will be helpful. This is a new thing. We're just rolling out today. So we do hope this will be useful. And then we have another option for you. So we have two different templates that you can pick. This is just a different one with a bit different information sort of depending on what statistics and stories you have available from your library. But anyway, you can pick one or the other, whichever you prefer, you can mix and match. Definitely customize this to your heart's content. Change the colors to match your logo. You know, if you have different statistics in there, you can put those in. But again, we hope to just provide you with some starting points to make a visual and to sort of prompt what statistics that we found have been helpful for other libraries to get this done. We know we've heard over and over that sometimes your governing bodies can be reluctant for it because they are hanging on to those three assumptions that we've been talking about. Sometimes particularly that revenue part can be hard for a governing body to accept. But again, hopefully this having them in this visual will be helpful. So this is going to be available on the end library finds website or? No, we actually, well, we can have it available there too. Yes, but we do have it on the Colorado State Libraries website. So yeah. And again, we are just rolling this out. If you have suggestions or if you have any trouble using this, please let us know. We are more than happy to tweak it. But we do hope this will be a good starting point for you. And what if you try? What if you make your pitch to your governing body and to your community and you get a lot of pushback and they say no. This happens. It really does. It can be hard sell depending on your governing body and your community in general. So definitely ask why and see how you can work with that reasoning with their answer. You might consider changing your ask. Perhaps you do a one year pilot program. Some libraries have done that successfully. You know, we'll try this for a year. We'll collect the statistics and we'll see what happens. If it is successful, if the books keep coming back in a timely manner, if we're really not losing revenue, then we'll make a pitch to make this a permanent change. Some libraries, as I mentioned before, do start with children's and young adult material or just children's even. And again, you can start that way, collect the statistics on those materials. And again, at the end of a year, you can prove that, hey, nothing bad has happened. And in fact, look at all these positive effects that we've had. We've had more cardholders. We've had more circulation in these materials. This is only for the good. This is only improving our community. Then you can try to make the pitch again to go totally fine free. Definitely keep collecting data and stories. And you've planted a seed and maybe you try again in a year, even if all of those other things fail. So you can see here this graphic is from Adams County Public Library in Ohio. Maybe you can be also a tree with leaves falling sometime once you planted that seed. So it can take patience. We're not saying this is easy. And again, we're trying to give you some data and some tools to work with. It can be frustrating to try this. But I really think, too, as this movement continues that it might get a little easier. I'm hoping it'll get a little easier if you can say, well, look at this map. All of these other libraries in our states have already gone fine free. And they've not had any kind of negative effects. They've only seen improvements in the library service. So it's a movement. Let's get on board. And here's where we take your questions. And just here's an example, play on the question slide. The Waverly Public Library in Iowa did this nice fine free Q&A when they were going fine free. And these are some of the questions that you will get when you're trying to go fine free or once you've just gone fine free, you'll get these questions a lot. But now is your chance to ask us questions. All right, great. OK, yes. We do have some questions coming in. Anybody who doesn't have anything you want to ask or share about your library's experiences with either going or attempting to go fine free, type into the questions section of your go to webinar interface. Let's see what we have. Your example is OK. All right. Someone wants to ask you've been kind of focusing on public but is there any research about public school libraries doing away with fines? I think you said on that map there's all types of libraries but those are all public libraries on that map. I can tell you that when we launched that map and I think Andy put it out on Twitter asking people to add themselves to the library. We heard from quite a few school libraries, university libraries, K through 12 libraries. My focus was on public libraries. My guess would be if you delved into the academic literature in school libraries, you'd probably find something similar. I have seen again just watching Twitter and watching the conversations there are school librarians who are also having this conversation. No librarian wants to regardless of where particularly school librarians do not want to get into an adversarial relationship with their students but there's also concern about getting materials back. I guess the short answer is I don't know about the research but I can tell you that the conversation is ongoing and I think as this has happened in public libraries, school librarians are also having this conversation. If the students are hearing about it at the public library and the parents, do you know they're going to mention it to the schools, I'm sure. And I think as school librarians see public librarians doing it, they're like, hmm, so yes. And I would say probably the same thing is happening in academic libraries. Again, we have not focusing on that arena but I believe that conversation is going on there too. And what's fun about academic librarians is they tend to be much more research focused. So in the academic, the literature, there are more like systemized studies about return rates and I remember reading a couple of those where they actually tested that. In fact, the one about, there was one, the gift cards I think was actually an academic library where they tried to reward students for returning materials and they did a systemized study and it failed. So the reward system does not work. Basically, fine punishing or rewarding people for returning stuff just doesn't work. There is no correlation. People are going to return stuff when they return it. The fine or not hasn't been relevant. Yeah, which is actually some of the questions I'm seeing coming in here are concerned about that. Let's see. Yeah, I guess I was just saying, are there stats out there? And I think you did mention some of this in various different reports you've mentioned. Are there stats out there that show items not returned after starting fine fee? We have staff that think we will lose our collection, that people will just take everything out and never return it because there's no... Yeah, so basically those different libraries with the examples I gave you, they're finding, that's everybody worries about that and what they're finding is it doesn't happen. Basically, there's a small portion of your patrons who are always going to have a hard time getting stuff back on time. And whether or not you find them is not going to affect their behavior. And that's why you have libraries that don't charge fines. They have the exact same late return rate as those that do charge fines. Libraries that have stopped charging fines find that the same number of materials come back late. What people are doing is it's not that there's no consequence. What libraries are doing is if you don't turn it back after a certain time, it becomes a lost item and then you get charged for it. So there's still a sanction down at the end of the line. But what they're capturing is all those people who are two or three or four days late who eventually get it back in or sometimes people don't bring it back in because they're embarrassed because they don't have the money to return it. And so they keep it rather than returning it. So when you drop fines, you might actually get more materials back from people who were too embarrassed to bring back their late materials. But you're not likely going to have your collection pillaged. The libraries who have dropped fines have not, I haven't seen a report yet where someone said, you know, all our books are gone. Yeah. And someone here mentions that actually, which is kind of interesting because someone else kind of answering the question that someone else had in here. This person said, I have a couple of questions regarding materials that will have to be replaced but not ever do. Do you still charge or block patrons if they have missing or damaged materials? That's a whole different discussion. So yes, what does the data? Yeah, some data that I saw indicated the same people who were blocked for excessive fines and came back were again blocked for not returning materials. So it's exactly what you said. Yeah, it's... You're never going to get 100% compliance. There are always going to be people who just can't quite get it together. And regardless of whether you charge fines, that's going to be the case. But what we're finding is by dropping those late fines, more people are accessing the information because they're not afraid of turning it in late. Yes, there are always going to be people who never return their materials. Yeah, and I was wondering, is there any data showing... What is the data show after two or more years? How long has some of this been going on? Right. Beth, chime in whenever you want, but basically we've been tracking for the past couple of years. It's funny when we started this, Beth, I remember Salt Lake City, we were all excited because they had six months of data. And I guess now that's like, what, two and a half years? The trend has continued. I think that there tends to be at the beginning an uptick in circulation when you get those first people back who are excited to come back. You're not going to have a continual increase in infinity, but in general, the trends have continued. Again, we were tracking six months and then it was a year. I have a librarian who checked in after the second year. And basically the numbers are holding steady returns. Yeah, there just hasn't been much beyond the two years yet of this being a thing, so... Except you have libraries who have never charged fines. Well, that would be, yes. The never, yeah. That's like just going to the people in Fairbanks that I think they've been since the 90s. And, you know, their library is a very healthy library with a healthy circulation. And there are other libraries that, like the Anything Libraries in Colorado that went fine free before the movement started. They used to have fines, but they went fine free. They were like bleeding edge. Yeah. And they, so they've been more, I don't recall offhand how long they've been fine free, but longer than this big trend has been going on and they also have had no negative effects. So there are a few places that we can, you can reach out to define longer. Yes. Yeah. And that's because someone wants to know, and I think you did mention a library journal, but wanting to know, I'm wondering if there's research beyond the white paper from Colorado State Library. And I think you guys did mention other research that had been done. You mean like... Yeah, go ahead, Beth. Oh, yeah. So there was the library journal survey from, I think it was 2017. It might have been 2018. 2017, I want to say. But yeah, and maybe Meg, you're better at answering this, but there has been, there has been more research than what we've done for sure. That's like individual public libraries as well. San Francisco Public Library just published this amazing, very detailed report on going fine free. It was very useful and... Right, a lot of the studies now are individual libraries and librarians. There's a man, Sam Cooke, a librarian in Connecticut, who is a systems librarian for his consortium. And so what he did was he looked at libraries within the consortium that had fine free policies and compared them to libraries that didn't have fine free policies. And he just published a report. So a lot of the... They're like evenly matched because they're all in the same consortium. Right, now we're talking about, like there's a library that is fine free within his consortium and there's other libraries that aren't. So he's able to look at the return rates on both of those. Yeah, but basically the libraries, a lot of the ongoing research right now is in real time in libraries as they're testing their own and tracking their own policy. Right, because it's all still so new to some places. Yeah. Yeah, here's an interesting question. Have you found any libraries that have gone, who have gone fine free have going back to collecting fines? Have we heard of anything like that happening where it didn't work, I guess, would be the reasoning? There is one in Canada and I am blanking on the name right now. You can help me out if you can remember, Beth. Windsor. Windsor, yes. And again, Sam Cooke did a kind of a nice job looking at that and maybe we can make that available. I'm going to see if I can pull it really quickly on the fly here. They had some kind of other stuff going on. I'm not saying that their data isn't what it is, but they had some other things going on in the community with, I don't know if it was a closure or they had a public relations problem, but there was, it was one that when you started digging down into it, it wasn't just about the fines. Yeah, but they didn't go back. It's Windsor Public in Ontario and I'm sure if you contact someone there, they'd be happy to or maybe not happy, but they didn't really want to share that information. But in a normal situation, obviously, it seems to be nobody's had to go back. Yeah. It has been just absolutely overwhelmingly positive. There's usually some pushback in the beginning, not always, but some people in the community and or the governing body are not happy about this, but that does subside and really just the positive impacts take over. Pushback or confusion over, wait, what do you mean library is not going to charge fines? That's what they do. Exactly. And some of those three assumptions are very strongly held. Well, of course, we need fines to get the books back on time and we need to teach kids responsibility. These kinds of assumptions really are strongly held in some cases, but usually without charging money. I mean, you borrow this item. It does not belong to us. We have to bring it back when it's due. That's pretty straightforward to me. But yeah, just another argument against that one is, you know, five year olds cannot return books on their own. This is true. Yes. Many teens can't even get to the library on their own to return their books. So if you're teaching responsibility to kids, that argument really doesn't fly. Yeah. So here's a good question. What do you think about fine amnesty programs? A good step if a library isn't willing to do a way with fines altogether? Absolutely. Those short term... In the next month, no fines. Just bring everything back in your... Like that one, the one library that's doing the waving of their fines. Yeah, we see that a lot. San Francisco Public Library had amnesties periodically and they actually use that as part of their reason why they wanted to go fine free in the first place. But yes, if you can get people back in who are not visiting by all means, it can also be a nice first step. Yes. Give them a taste of it before you totally go full on in. Yeah. I know a university I worked at did a... And I've seen other places use a food for fines. We would do it a couple of times a year where instead of coming in and paying whatever your fine is, bring in a can, some sort of canned good or some non-perishable food and we will get donated to the local food bank and just bring in the one item or item that equals something to your fine and then you'll get all your fines waived so you don't have to bring us money. Just grab the can of peas that you weren't going to eat anyways out of your cabinet. And so that was something that we would do as well. Right. Some people will resist that saying that the people who need the library the most might not be able to... might not want to be parting with food. Like food is something... Yeah. So that can be a little bit of an issue in low-income communities depending on your patron population. All right. I'm trying to read what we have here. Okay. Here's one. We are fine free at this library. Gene Rogers Morrill Library in Dodge. But how do you go about obtaining fees for items that are months or even years overdue like DVDs and video games after failed attempts of requesting replacement fees or the item be returned? Years overdue at some point it's a lost item. Well, some libraries do go the collection agency route. Which is one option. There's also something to do with the blocking of their privileges or other things. Yeah. For sure. And you can block various privileges whether it's borrowing or you can't use the computers. You know, there's different levels of how strict you can be about that to get their attention. Right. The goal is to get it back. And there are going to be materials that don't come back. And I think that's a conversation you can have with other public librarians who experience that. You know, again, we've run into the collection agency, the emails, the reminders, and then the blocking access until they either pay or bring the item back. But another conversation really to have is what is the purpose of the library? Is it to give access to the people that need to use the library or is it getting the materials? And, you know, obviously if it's a patron who does this routinely and it really is running into a lot of lost items, that could be one issue. But if it's one item, one time, you know, it is just something to consider actually to bring up one recommendation that is in the white paper that Meg wrote is to actually not charge replacement fees for lost or damaged picture books because those items get lost and damaged the most. And they are also in circulation the shortest of any type of material. And so if you don't charge for those, for lost or damaged picture books, then that is the cost of doing business with your youngest patrons. Children's librarians all know that a child's relationship with a book is not just reading, it's tactile, it's chewing, it's dragging into the bathtub. It's taking it far. And again, cost of doing business for getting those early literacy materials into people's homes. I think that's a really huge thing, the cost of doing business. That is something that I think a lot of these libraries and some maybe people in the community or in the municipalities need to start thinking about it that way. It's, you know, if you run a store and you have somewhere built into your budget, things are going to be shop lifted. And you may track down those people because it's illegal, but you will also have that built into somewhere that stuff is going to happen. And in libraries, I think this is going to be, you're about access and getting things to the people and the children and sometimes you're just going to have to give up on getting the item back, take the high road, show your, you know, be the good person, go to that person who did lose the item and say, all right, we know that you haven't returned this. Obviously it's gone missing. We don't know where it is, but we're going to just as a sign of good faith so that you can continue back and use the library and, you know, have the conversation with them so that they know that you know that this thing went missing, maybe. Don't just say, eh, it's all right, it's all good. We're going to wipe this like clean completely and forget. So, you know, we know this is, who knows where it is, maybe in your personal collection now, but let's start fresh and see if we can get you back into using the library and doing everything good. And now someone has a question I think is related to this too because you talk about how much things cost and that person was talking about, you know, DVDs and things, we got a couple of two questions here that kind of related. What do you do if many of the items you offer are valued in the thousands of dollars? And then are there ever any exceptions to the fine free? And I think we do have that. We discussed some of that. Like our Wi-Fi hotspots are in extreme demand and in short supply. We have a high overdue fine for equipment and it does seem to work to keep the items circulating. Yeah, certainly some libraries will still charge overdue fines for things like media or for Wi-Fi hotspots for things like museum passes that are much higher value. Some circulate even laptops or GoPro cameras, things like that. And so, you know, that is certainly a library by library decision to make, but many libraries do that. They're fine free on everything, but these items and just make it, if you can just make it very specific in your policy so people know. I would maybe mention to make it as easy as possible, like as least confusing as you can. So you don't have, well, we charge, we don't charge any fines for books, but we charge this for DVDs and this other amount for this other item. And, you know, so if you make it really complicated, I think that could turn people off from borrowing stuff. So keep it as simple as possible, but, you know, also, you know, certainly make it reasonable for your library. Yeah, I think it's totally appropriate to have varying, it's going to depend on a case-by-case basis to your library and the things you're loaning out, absolutely. And I think your patrons will understand that if it is very clear. I mean, like I said, many of our libraries have done this as a gradual thing. First, our children's books are fine free, but adult is still fine and then graduate working into that. But it could be the same thing for very expensive specialty materials. There's no reason why you couldn't have different roles for different types of things. You just, it does not have to be across the board. Nothing is no fines for anything. Yeah. That is an interesting question. I'm not sure if this is even, are there any stats about fines on interlibrary loan items? You know, it's funny, I've seen that conversation every once in a while. That's kind of complicated, right? Because what do you do when you have a library that charges fine and a library that doesn't? And I mean, I'm not an expert on that. I think it has, it's a policy and my guess would be you have a conversation with the patron. If you're interlibrary loaning something from a library that charges fines and you don't, you just, there has to be transparency. But I know that does become an issue in, with libraries that are sharing materials but have different policies. My guess would be libraries that share materials have all sorts of different policies and it's a conversation. Yeah. I think you'd have to just discuss, you had default to the, whoever owns the material that their, generally I think their rules would have to apply to their material. So yeah, it would be, let the patron who's borrowing it on your end know, just so you know, we don't charge fines but this is some other libraries thing, not ours. Yeah. We have to default to them. Let's see. These are great questions. Yeah. Someone has questions here that I'm not sure is related to being fine free but I'll ask anyway since Sunday and also let everybody know we are a little after 11 a.m. And I did say at the beginning of this, we are an hour long show here if you do pay attention to that. But we are going to stay on and keep going as long as, until we answer everybody's questions even though if we go longer than the hour, that's not a problem. So if you're able to stick around with us and ask more questions, have them answered, please do. If you do need to leave because you only a lot of an hour and you're scheduled for this where you're recording everything and be able to watch and listen to everything later when the recording is ready. But these questions are, what is the standard loan period for books and doing when your library is fine free and are there any auto renewal limits? Like so basically maybe do you change things be when you go fine free or? Various library by library but in general, I know that a lot of people have moved to auto renew and then there are a certain number of auto renewals and then it becomes a lost item. And then when the item comes back, they just take it back and then move on. So there's no fine associated with it but Beth, do you have anything to add to that? Yeah, it really varies library by library like Meg said and it's really up to you. I don't know that we've seen or that we really have any best practices around around that yet. Yeah. I think I don't know that there would be anything specific to the fact that you're fine free or not fine free because that's more about how long do you want anything to be out at all? Right. Right. Yeah. All right. Now here's someone I'm trying to determine how much we spend collecting fines. I've looked at postage and collection agency as costs. But I feel that the cost of staff time spent collecting fines would be a hard sell. Is there any place else I should be looking for how much it costs us to collect fines? Is there any sort of a standard of I think you guys had mentioned the how much time but how do we convince our powers that be that that is something that actually costs money? Well definitely staff time is the biggest and if you can make the case again using the formula of some libraries use 30 seconds some use one minute per transaction for paying a fine if you add up all that staff time in a year that it takes to collect dimes and quarters and then you say if you give specific examples of how that staff time could be better used. Yes. Oh sure. Oh yeah. That and tie them together. That can be persuasive to some people. Yeah. I've also seen a couple in reading different libraries reports to their commissions. I've seen a couple where and this varies by library but there was actually a time before opening like a half hour before opening when it was specific people's jobs to open the till you know or deal with the money and count the money and report the money back. And because they've got this basically cash box that they need to keep track of and so they they tracked basically it was like a half hour an hour every morning by two different staff people times you know however many days a year they they work time waiting for the for the the money truck that the great big armored truck that comes to collect money. Yeah. So it's basically taking into account all the time that staff members when they could be interacting with patrons or doing programming and they're spending it with their you know sorting through Nichols and dimes and quarters and running. Yeah. Clips. Mm hmm. All right. So we have any other questions get them typed in here. We have a couple other gear to read. So it says we were in the process of going fine. Okay. Our library went fine free on children's and teen print material starting July 1st. Yay. And this library one of the strategies I used and convincing our city council to accept this idea was the tie into our states ready to read by third grade law. Yeah. Which is how to use to underscore how public libraries can be a part of the solution to literacy issues. That's great. Yeah. If there's some other program or some sort of initiative out there find it and use that as as part of your reasoning. Yeah. That's terrific. Good for you. Good job. Yeah. And then it says we were in the process of going fine free with secured funding to cover our costs in the first year. And we're working on amending our circulation policy. Your template will definitely be useful to us. The templates that you have and you got that link right there for them on the page. Yes. Great. Excellent. Yeah. So that was all that I had on the question so far. Anybody have a last minute questions you want to get answered right away from Megan Beth get them typed in. Otherwise as you can see there you can of course reach out to either of them by email to ask more details more questions. We'll have like I said the slides if Beth you want to email me your slides or wherever we can get them posted up with the recording. The recording will be available sometime tomorrow. It takes some time for me to get to get their archive the video and the slides uploaded and everything out there but it will be available by the end of the day tomorrow. Thursday every all of you who attended this morning and anybody who also registered today for the show will get an email from me when it is ready for you to view. So you'll be able to go and access it and share it with everyone that you want to later. So this is awesome. I'm so glad I was able to have you guys on. Oh thanks for having us today. I know this is one of the sessions that was for those of you that do pay attention. I think you guys submitted this to our big talk from small libraries conference. Yes. Yes. This is an annual for those you don't know an annual online conference that I do the last Friday in February every year big talk from small libraries. It's some things that small and real libraries are doing out there and we have we have too many it's a one day conference with 12 slots and I got like 37 submissions. So we ran out of room for the day and I wasn't ready to do like a multi-day thing for it. So I was able to you know we have we have luckily we have encompass live here was able to move a whole bunch of them on to we have another way to get your information out there. Thank you Chris. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. That wasn't like anybody else has typed in any desperate questions they want to have asked now while we're talking. But I think this is great. I think the statistics are definitely something that those people and the municipalities and the government are going to really love that part of it in conjunction with some of those stories and I think having both sides of that isn't that's really important and I'm hoping that a lot of people will take this information here and go out and do it. I'd love to see that finds becoming a thing of the past and that it's something that your grandparents had to do just like what why would you ever pay for that? I agree. Yes. You're thinking that way about it. All right. I am going to pull presenter control to my screen here now to wrap up for today. All right. So we are all right. All right. So so thank you everybody for attending. As I said, we will get the recording up and I've got here. Here's that end library finds page that you can go and look at with the map here. The interactive map and as you can see I just want to show the international view of it that it is. Thank you all over the country all over the world. Sorry. People on libraries are doing this. So hopefully we'll get more and more of them of you guys on there. So I'm going to go to our main page here. This is our Encompass Live page. I'm going to show you where the archive will be. These are upcoming shows but right underneath here's a link to our archives and our most recent ones are at the top of the list. So today's show will be there like I said by the end of the day tomorrow. There'll be a link to the video the recording of the presentation on slides on our YouTube channel and then a specific separate link to these just the slides themselves. You want to go through those. I'll be here and I'll show you what we are here on our archives. You can see we have a search feature here that searches on the entire archives or just the most recent 12 months. This is because this is actually the 11th year of Encompass Live. We started the show in January 2009 and we do have all of our archives. All of our previous shows are here on our archives. Yeah, so it gets to be a really huge list. So our crack it team here put together a search feature for us. So do pay attention when you are going through our archives watching everything. Everything is has a date so you can see when it was originally on broadcast. So do pay attention. Some of the information there may be old outdated services or products might not exist anymore, but we are librarians and this is what we do. We archive things. So everything will always be up there as long as we know the Internet's out there putting it up there for us. So if you do want more up to date info just limit your search just most recent 12 months. So that will be for today's show. I hope you join us next week when our top Oh, actually, we also have a Facebook page. I should mention that first. If you aren't a big Facebook user, give us a like over there. We post reminders things. I posted a little thing about the map while we were doing the show today. Reminders about shows when they are coming up when recordings are available and everything we post on here. So if you do like to use Facebook, give us a like over there and you'll get a couple of posts a week from me on there. Um, I'll address next week on our topic is library summer reading program update for any of you guys doing summer reading programs. If that is what you're involved in, there are some changes coming to the program. Hopefully changes for the good. And Sally Snyder, who is our rest library Commission's coordinator of Children and Young Adult Library Services. We're going to talk about all the changes coming to the program. Um, nothing, nothing, you terrible. But they're taking a lot more control back to themselves. That's going to be a good thing. So if you're in, if you do do summer reading, please do sign up for that one. And any of our other shows we have here, here's our last September dates. I'm working on more dates. I'm confirming and finalizing some descriptions for October. So keep an eye on our page and you'll see when our new shows are being posted. Um, you can see we have one week here where we do not have a show. That is the week of our annual Nebraska Library Association and School Librarians Association annual conference. We always take that one week off. Um, during the year, um, we're also doing it jointly with the Iowa Library Association this year. So that is the one week that we will not have an Encompass Live, but please do sign up for any of our other shows. So thank you very much, uh, Beth and Meg for being with us this morning. Thanks for having us. And thank you everybody for tending. We'll see you next time on Encompass Live. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye.