Fines are a fine thing – aren’t they?
From the Wall Street Journal
A New Threat To Your Credit Rating
Unpaid Parking Tickets, Library Fees Start to Hurt Consumer Credit As Strapped Cities Seek PaymentMr. DaCorsi, who says the black mark affected his interest rate on a home loan, has since barred his children from visiting the library. “We go to Barnes & Noble now,” he says. “We can get books there without fear of retribution.”Killing Off Fines Is Long Overdue
This kind of publicity hurts us, and it hurts us over and over again. We want to see ourselves as the guardians of the public good, but we end up looking like nitpicking gremlins.
I have always lived with fines. I’ve never had a problem with them, seeing them as a way to motivate people into bringing things back eventually. Perhaps that is rather draconian, but then it’s always worked for me, and I have always paid up. Meanwhile on the other side of the counter, I have seen the screaming gorgons that respectable borrowers turn into when told they have an unexpected 12p fine (yes 12 pence!).
But I can imagine a world without fines in the already mentioned netFlix model. Infact it reminds me of a conversion with a retired headteacher. He was extolling the virtues of a market stall in a far off town that allowed him to buy a feture film on DVD for £5. He could keep the video as he had bought it.
BUT he could also take it back and swap it for another, paying a pound or two less for the new one. This too he could take back, and buy more films at the reduced rate. This allowed Mr Headteacher to keep a video for three months (the rough gap between visiting the market stall again) or more for a modest £5 or less.
I commented that he could pay £2 at the library and get a video for a week, cheaper than Blockbuster. He replied that that was all very well, but he often found that he hadn’t got around to watching or finishing the film (grandchildren are so time intesive!) And so not having to return the film in any specified timespan suited him just fine.
Maybe our library could consider the immplications? We could do that. We could buy the resellable copies (as we are technically selling them) rather than the rental copies (which we have to buy at some £30 pound a time) we could barcode them, so that we could issue them on an openended loan, and send reminders to the effect that there are new films in and if you bring the old back, we can discount you on the purchase of your next film.
What can the library offer over a market stall in a far off town? We are local. We can offer a certain perpetuity that a market trader may be less inclined to offer.