Julie's Journal : On Overdue Collection

My last two days have been taken up with working on overdue items.  Overdue collection is one of those library tasks that no one wants to talk about.  It's not particularly fun and people can get upset when we approach them about their overdue items.  I thought I would give a quick overview of our process.

Once a month (theoretically - sometimes not quite as often) we print out a list of all the items that we show are overdue.  We divide up the list and go all over the library looking for those items.  Occasionally we will find something that was returned, but somehow missed being checked back in on the computer before being re-shelved.  Those items get checked back in and any associated fines are erased.  We take the list that is remaining and send letters out to the patrons who have the items checked out.  The first month, a patron gets a reminder; the second month, a second notice; the third month, a final letter.  Most items get returned at the reminder or second notice stage and we never advance to the final letter.  If, after the final letter has been sent, we still have not received our items back, we send the account over to City Hall where they go through their own process to retrieve the items or payment for them. 

Now, you may be asking, "What's the big deal?".  Why does it matter if one patron doesn't bring an item back?  There are several reasons that overdue collection is important.  The most important one to my logical, mathematical brain is simply economics.  I ran the overdue report today and the value of the 253 items that are currently overdue is $4,426.54.  That amount is about 1/3 of our yearly book budget.  If we had to replace all the overdue items, the number of new materials we would be able to purchase for the library would be significantly reduced.  Since we are dedicated to bringing as much new and up-to-date material as possible to the library, we really don't want to have to spend money purchasing older items again.  We also want to be able to meet demand, and it is not fun to have a patron request an item and have to tell them that it was due 6 months ago and hasn't been returned. 

We love our patrons, and we understand that sometimes life happens.  We hope they understand when we send a friendly reminder about returning items!