Great Barrington — After some discussion at its Monday, February 27 meeting, the Selectboard approved a proposal to make the town’s libraries fine-free. The recommendation was made by Library Director Samara Klein and Adult Circulation Supervisor Christine Warner, who were both at the Feb. 27 meeting.
According to documents submitted to the town, in Fiscal 2021-2022, the fine fees and fees charged to patrons for replacing library materials totaled $3,555. The library officials could not delineate between fines and replacement fees, but the fees are estimated to be roughly a 50-50 split, with a fine revenue estimated at $1,777.50 for Fiscal 2021-2022.
“Back in 2019, the American Library Association passed a resolution on monetary library fines as a form of social inequality,” Warner told the Selectboard. “It’s a barrier to knowledge and a barrier to families who can’t afford these fines. In 2022, the CW Mars Library Consortium voted to no longer charge fines.”
The CW Mars Consortium includes 158 libraries across the state, including Great Barrington libraries. “Because we are already members of the consortium, we were grandfathered in as being allowed to continue to charge funds,” Warner said. “At the moment, a very small number of libraries in the consortium charge fines, and we’re still one of those libraries. All of the surrounding libraries in Sheffield, Monterey, Marlborough, Pittsfield, and Springfield are all fine-free. In the seven years I’ve been working at the library, I’ve seen firsthand what these fines can do to patrons. They come in embarrassed because there is such a stigma to having library fines. We try to comfort these people, but they still can’t take anything out if it’s over $10 [in fines]. That may not seem like a lot, but to some people, that’s a financial burden. I’ve seen the heartbreak and we have had to turn people away.”
Warner said the library going fine-free would not absolve patrons from lost items or items that have not been returned. She said that if an item has not been returned after 28 days, a patron would be charged for it and their account would be blocked. Internet hotspot devices and museum passes would be designated as lost items if they are not returned 24 hours after their due date.
All fees would be expunged from a patron’s account if the items are returned to the library. “We would also do an amnesty mode for a period,” Klein said. “We would have an amnesty period of about a month where patrons could come in and bring in their overdue items and have those fines stricken off their account. In many communities that have done [the fine-free system] across America, they have seen a lot of patrons coming back. We would hope that this would happen at the Great Barrington libraries as well.”
The Selectboard unanimously approved the proposal.
Klein said, however, that the fine-free format for the libraries will not go into effect immediately. She said that the libraries would first have to update their borrowing policies in consultation with both the town’s library trustees and the CW Mars Library Consortium. At the meeting, she did not give a time or date estimate of when the new policies would go into effect.
