In Indianapolis, Indiana, the Marion County Library System has been estimated to being owed 5 million dollars in the past fifteen years. This is mostly because people have not returned any of the items they had chosen to rent and borrow from the library. People who have rented from this library system owe from $40 to $8,000. These incredible amounts of overdue fines that are owed to the library have prompted them to take another look into library policy. In 2004 the Marion county library system hired a debt collections agency to help them go after the people who owed them money. The library paid the debt collections agency $162,000 last year and have earned back their money they paid the collections agency by a margin of three to one. The Marion County library system if looking to reform many of its current policies. Its current limit on the amount of items that can be rented from the library is 125. The cause of people having such high bills owed to the library is because of people coming in and renting 125 items and not returning them. In this case, the person who came in and rented 125 items from the library was untraceable and never came back. The library is now looking to change this 125-item limit and is also working closely with a lawyer to take the next correct step of legal action.
I think that this is a real eye opener to something that happens everywhere around the country. This article really shows people how if a libraries rental return rates are not monitored then something similar to the case in Marion County could happen anywhere.
No comments:
Post a Comment