[Michlib-l] Library of Things Policy

[Wendy Chapman]

Hello all,

We've had a Library of Things here for five years now.  I have spent the
three years that I have been here tweaking the policy with our director as
situations have dictated and find myself once again at a crossroads of what
to do.

We have a continuing issue of patrons returning items from the collection
late.  Our current policy dictates that a patron may lose their privilege
to check out items from the LoT once they have been late three times.  I
give grace the first time they are late, so they really get four chances
before we consider removing their privileges.  We do not specify within
what timeframe those three late occurrences happen.

So, as an example, we could have a patron that was late three times in 2022
and has been a model patron since then, but if they are late again this
month they would lose their privilege per policy.  Also, as a fine free
library we really do not want to add a monetary penalty to the policy.  We
do send the patron to collections for the value of the item when it has
been missing for a certain amount of time.  In extreme cases, when the
collections action has not produced the item we do make police reports.

Any thoughts out there as to how to modify the policy to make the
repercussions more apparent?  What has worked for your libraries?  Or
didn't work?

Many thanks in advance!

Wendy

Wendy L. Chapman
LoT & Seed Library Coordinator
Buchanan District Library
269.695.3681  Ext. 16
*www.buchananlibrary.org <http://www.buchananlibrary.org>*
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail3.mcls.org/pipermail/michlib-l/attachments/20250905/4ef51e2d/attachment.html>