Conrad Helms, assistant librarian, has published a journal article, “Eliminating overdue fines for undergraduates: A six-year review,” in the Journal of Access Services.
Effective for the 2012–2013 academic year, the Hilda C. Landers Library at St. Mary’s College of Maryland eliminated daily overdue fines for undergraduates on books and some other materials. In 2019, nine years of comprehensive data on overdue returns (comprising three years before and three years after the change) was extracted examined to see if there were any changes in overdue behavior. The results show that immediately following the elimination of daily overdue fines for undergraduates, there was a marked increase in both the overdue rate and the length of overdue for books. However, this did not hold for SMCM-owned materials loaned to undergraduates at other institutions, and there were mixed results for undergraduate loans for some non-book SMCM-owned materials and Interlibrary Loan.
If you are interested in reading the full article, email cahelms@smcm.edu.
