Christian Science Monitor - Libraries are starting to think differently about lost and late books, particularly those checked out by young people. Some are waiving late fees outright. The Los Angeles County Library, in addition to recently doing that, is also letting anyone 21 and younger “read away” prior fines and charges for lost books. The Great Read Away is part of a multipart initiative that aims to eliminate policies or programs that impede citizen access to services. Since the program began in June 2017, the county’s 87 libraries have logged more than 29,000 reading sessions and lowered fines accordingly. Among those benefiting from the program is 10-year-old Dariana Martinez, a fourth-grader at Fourth Street Elementary School in East Los Angeles. She says she had racked up “about $30” in fines and has now reduced that to less than $10 through reading during weekly visits to the library. “The Read Away program helped me, 'cause a lot of the time I forget my books and my mom has to pay,” she says. “So when my mom heard about Read Away, she was really happy.” Give us your feedback
1 comment:
That sounds, like so many locally-conceived ideas, an excellent one.
I've always been a voracious reader, and almost always returned books on time because I'd finish them before they were due and want more, so why not return the finished ones at the same time.
In summer, most libraries where we lived had reading programs for kids with little gold stickers and other nonsense that appeals to competitive little scunners like I was, and since I was reading everything anyway, I'd always sign up and could generally end up in one of the top-3 positions - which gratified me enormously.
So I can imagine, if I had been someone who sometimes returned books late, how attractive the idea of "reading off" fines would be. It'd have been almost like being paid for doing what I loved doing anyway.
Very clever, those librarians!
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