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>*
Our LOT is relatively compact, so returns and condition of returns hasn't been a huge problem--EXCEPT for our hot spots and Chromebooks, which are constantly out and on hold, and overdue from the same people. Staff complains a lot,but we haven't implemented any real changes--except to buy more hotspots, which also instantly go out for extended times. Is yours largely tech items that go overdue? On Fri, Sep 5, 2025 at 4:08 PM Wendy Chapman via Michlib-l < michlib-l@mcls.org> wrote:
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>*
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