Books line the shelves at the Centralia Timberland Library.
Starting next year, branches of the Timberland Regional Library system will stop charging late fees for books and other items not returned in a timely fashion.
Timberland’s Board of Trustees voted unanimously for the new policy at its regular meeting held Wednesday, Dec. 18, in hopes that the move will bring former service users with excessive fines back into the system and increase circulation.
The board plans on examining the financial and overall impact of the new policy in the years to come.
Corby Varness, the board’s Grays Harbor County representative, emphasized portions of the policy about the library system’s responsibility to provide essential library services free of charge and recognize barriers associated with fines.
“I work with kids all the time, I hear it all the time: ‘I don’t go to the library, can’t afford it. You have to pay.’ But if they have a late fee, they think they can never go back. And these are kids that are sucking up books, but aren’t using our library because they can’t pay some piddly fine,” Varness said. “I think we can take a 1 percent hit if it gives us more users.”
According to information from the policy, Timberland Regional Library does plan on seeking charges for the replacement of lost and damaged materials.
According to Timberland’s 2020 budget, library fines were projected to make up about $242,000 of the system’s 2019 general fund revenues, which adds up to less than 1 percent of the budget and about a 10 percent decrease from the year prior.
The amount of revenue generated by library fines has been trending downward over the last few years due to the use of digital materials, according to the budget.
Bob Hall, Pacific County representative, said he approved of the move toward no fines, but opted to say he’d like to further review the transition and financial impact sooner.
Erica McCaleb, library manager at the Yelm Timberland Library, said she’s excited for the new move.
“We find that fines are often a barrier,” she said. “It’s kind of a fresh start to the new year.”
Libraries all across the country are starting to jump on the bandwagon of going fine-free, McCaleb said. The most recent and most notable success story for going fine-free was found in an Oct. 30 story in The Chicago Sun-Times on Chicago Public Library’s recent elimination of late fees.
“They actually found that they were getting back more materials with no overdue fees,” McCaleb said.
Library commissioners in Chicago cited the policy change for a 240-percent increase in the library’s book return rate over a three-week period.
McCaleb said the library system is hoping to see an increase in circulation numbers, which has an indirect effect on decisions such as funding.
“It’s one of the only numbers we can collect that shows how much we’re being used,” McCaleb said. “I think the main benefit is getting resources to those that need them and the added benefit is the increased circulation.”
Mike McGowan, an associate of the Yelm Timberland Library who has been with that branch for nearly 25 years, said that it was only about 10 years ago that Timberland instituted a fee policy after being fee-free for a number of years.
He agrees that the decision is a good one, and added that it should open library services back up to people that might have been kept away due to fines.
