Two months ago, a Houston resident walked into the city’s public library and returned three long-overdue books from the 1990s.
The trio of the returned books included “Tenth Dimension” by Jeremy Bernstein on elementary particle physics, “The New Ambidextrous Universe” by Martin Gardner about the asymmetric DNA helix, and “Archery: A Sport for Everyone” by the Athlete Institute. These books had been missing for so long, the library had removed them from its system. They didn’t have a barcode, only a checkout card stamped with the due date: Nov. 13, 1992.
The customer had apparently forgotten about the books and only recently discovered them in her attic, according to Houston Public Library Communications Director Carmen Abrego. But instead of having to pay a late fee, she was welcomed back to the library and given a renewed membership for the first time in 30 years.
In January, Houston followed in the footsteps of other major Texas cities like San Antonio, Dallas, Austin, and Fort Worth, eliminating late fees for its library system to encourage more residents, particularly younger and low-income Houstonians, to use its 40-plus locations. Since then, residents have returned a total of 23,420 books and other items valued at $468,302, Abrego said.
The library also hosted its first amnesty event since 2014, from Jan. 18 to Feb. 17, allowing residents to request the removal of all past fines. The physics and archery enthusiast was among the 3,098 customers who cleared their overdue accounts during the month-long period.
Late fines don’t necessarily motivate people to return books on time and can actually deter those owing fines from using the facility again, with communities of color and low-income residents disproportionately affected, a Syracuse University study showed. For instance, when Chicago eliminated fines in 2019, the library system saw a 240 percent surge in book returns.
See here for the background. Harris County’s library system followed suit a few weeks later. According to the story, nearly half of the long-overdue books that have been returned were children’s books. The point here is for people to use the library and then bring the books back. Looks like this new system is working great so far.