FINE FREE HYDE PARK LIBRARY
Greetings and happy almost spring, Hyde Park Library patrons. We are so excited to announce that on Tuesday, March 1st, we will cease collecting late fees on material checked out at Hyde Park Library. At the February Board of Trustees meeting, a case was made to do this by the Director based on the negative impact such fees have on the economically disadvantaged. The Board voted in favor of a trial period starting on March 1st. This decision will be reviewed at the end of December. If, as hoped, this has a positive or neutral impact on return rates, this will become a permanent policy. However, if it turns out that patrons are using this as an excuse to keep items out for unreasonably long periods of time, late fees will return in 2023. Please, please understand that we will still be collecting replacement fees. Patrons are still responsible for lost, damaged or simply un-returned items and will be charged accordingly. In fact, the MHLS catalog system already automatically bills patrons for items when they have been overdue for a certain period of time and nothing is going to change about that. Simply put, we are no longer going to punish patrons for keeping their books for an extra week or two to finish them and we are taking the anxiety out of returning late books. Considering the past two years we have all been through, we all could do with a little less anxiety, don't you think?
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