Serving Gogebic, Iron and Ontonagon Counties
Serving Gogebic, Iron and Ontonagon Counties
By CHARITY SMITH
Wakefield — The Wakefield Library will continue to forgive all overdue fines that have been accrued by patrons so far this year and will not be charging fines until after May 27.
Librarian Carly Rusch said that the library has not been charging fines since the pandemic began as the library did not want to place a harsh financial burden on those that were already financially strapped.
“It was an unspoken fact that we were pretty lenient about charging fines,” said library president Lorraine Mussatti.
According to Rusch, the library board is still undecided as to whether or not to revert back to charging fines or to stop charging them all together.
Rusch said she decided to forgive fines through a specific date so as to allow those who still have books out to be covered and give people a heads up that library fines might be issued in the future.
According to Rusch, a lot of libraries across the nation stopped charging fines when the pandemic started and several major libraries have stopped charging them entirely. She said that a lot of libraries now only charge for lost or damaged books. She said that if they eliminate the fines, it might help lower income families to be able to use the libraries resources.
“I started to change my tune on (charging fines) when I started to read about other libraries in major cities, such as New York City and Chicago, having suspended their late fines indefinitely,” said Rusch. “We want people to have an incentive to bring things back in a timely manner, but we don’t want to punish people.”
Rusch said that the board will discuss whether or not to implement late fines during its next meeting on May 25 at 5 p.m.