| OCR Text |
Show County library tightens policies to stop misuse The Uintah County Library is tightning their book checking out policy, Oct. 1, to combat an increasing number of overdue books and books which have been lost. Over the past year, 948 books from the library have been put on the hopeless list and 706 books are overdue. These figures are more than double those of last year. "Because of this trend, as of Oct. 1 no more books will be checked out unless they bring in their overdue books," Evan Baker, assistant librarian, said. "They also won't be able to use someone else's card." Tracking down overdue books is nearly a full-time job at the library, Baker said. Monday the overdue cards are pulled and during the week an employee at the library spends four hours daily making contact with persons per-sons with overdue books to remind them. Many of the "hopeless" cases are those with disconnected telephones or moved away. "Overdue books have escalated in the last year and a half mostly caused by the new people moving in," Baker said. "But a lot of old residents have overdue book," he added. If the new policy doesn't stem the overdue book problem at the library, the Library Board has been discussing working with the county attorney on a deal to take violators to small claims court. Between 20 and 50 books are put on the hopeless list monthly, which means the library has given up hope of ever recovering the books. "At $20 a book, the loss adds up fast," Baker said. Another policy which may be implemented im-plemented by the library is to have patrons carry a patron card and be responsible for all the books on that card even though it is lost. "Many times we are sure people have checked out a book, but they deny it and we have to take their word," Baker said. The library also intends to tighten down on issuing library cards. According to Baker, the escalation of misuse of public libraries is affecting small towns more than the larger ones because many small towns are not prepared for it. It all goes back to the fact that "the library isn'tfree, the people pay for it," Baker concluded. |
