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January 30, 2007
£158,000 owed for library fines in Essex
According to this article in the local paper.
Perhaps this means that these people will also never return the books upon which the fines are owed. Therefore when the catalogue says "this book is out on loan" - in reality it is lost and unavailable.
The library computer systems across the country tell us that the "lending stock" has fallen from 100m books to 80m-- but if you take a fair estimate of losses of the kind hinted at here, and losses which arise from straightforward theft of the kind any shop experiences, it is possible that the "lending stock" may already be below 50m books.. It is certainly true that any library I go into has precious little to borrow. That observation is generally more true in the urban areas and the south than in the rural areas and in the north (but that is not a scientific assessment)
Posted by Tim Coates at January 30, 2007 12:59 PM