Not so responsible borrowers

One of the things that I’ve relearned, since becoming an active borrower at the library again, is patience. Within our multiple-town library system, there are only so many books to go around. I have two books on order now—one has come in, the other one hasn’t. The book that has come in is the third book in a series that I’m reading. The second book in the series is the one that is still not available. I’ve had both books on order for three weeks. My hope is that the people who have that particular title checked out will return them on time. Of course, there are no guarantees.

I got to thinking about that and looked around the library online system at some of the books I’ve already read. Most of the books number less than 10 copies within the entire system. Some are overdue, but it looks as if most people return their books close to the return date. A few copies have been overdue for months. I ran across a couple that are two years overdue. It might be safe to assume, at this point, that they’ll end up on the missing or lost list. I never really stopped to consider how many books a library has to replace annually—if they can afford to replace all those that go missing.

And then—there is the youth borrower contingent.

Several years ago, the school systems across the state (I can’t remember if this was a federal mandate), began a summer reading program for grades 3-12. The libraries stocked up on a certain number of each title to lend out during the summer. Area businesses joined in the program to fund the book purchases. Without that capital input, the libraries couldn’t afford to purchase enough books for the program. It sounded like a wonderful program and businesses were eager to lend their names (and money) to it.

All good things have their pratfalls, especially where human nature is concerned.

Take, for example, a book that I’m reading now—The Golden Compass. It is billed as young adult fantasy literature. It is on the summer reading list for schools across the area. My library system secured 26 copies of the book designated for the summer reading program.

Of the 26 copies of The Golden Compass, this first week of September, 4 have been checked in within the last week. Three have been returned to storage for next year. And 3 more are still checked out, due to return in the next week. That’s a total of 7 books, out of 26, still available to the program—with 3 more still within the realm of possible.

Of the remaining 16 books, 7 are missing, 3 are lost, and 6 more are a month to several months overdue. A few of those will likely end up on the missing or lost list when all is said and done.

That’s not a very good rate of return and I’m sure that area businesses are well aware of it. One wonders how long they’ll continue to fund a program when it looks as if better than 50% of their contributions end up down the rabbit hole. They are asked to fund new purchases every year and, I suppose, asked to replace those books that have disappeared. Or not. I don’t really know.

And this is just one book title. Multiply that by the dozens of titles on the summer reading list.

So, what is the remedy? I’m sure that the libraries and coordinators of the program are asking themselves the same question. It would be easy (and logical) to say that kids need to be more responsible, but that does seem to be in the realm of wishful thinking if these figures are anything to judge by. How does a library system enforce responsibility? Good question. I’d imagine it needs to be answered before the program’s contributors chalk it up as an exercise in good community relations that didn’t work out. With money growing tighter and books more expensive, you’d think there might be a reckoning coming along in the not too distant future.