New York Public Library is waiving all late fees, backwards and forwards

because studies show that they are not effective at making people bring books back

but they are effective at making poor people not use the library

Nice!

god, this is so true

hell yes!

GOOD

yeah fines are a great way to make sure an overdue book never comes back, and the person who borrowed it never borrows anything else

and in the end, i'd much rather have people habitually return books a month late, but keep checking them out and reading, than just never check anything else out again

we stopped charging them but we didn't forgive old ones

and yeah like every place that's made this move has just immediately started doing better