Your books are due back ... whenever ...

Anyone who has ever borrowed from a library before will be familiar with the idea of an amnesty.  For those of you who aren't, it's where the library says "Oh look, we've gone temporarily blind and deaf, and aren't paying any attention while you return those grossly overdue books you took out six months ago and forgot were in the back seat of your car.  La la la la, and now we can't possibly make you pay the overdue fines as, you know, totally didn't see you bringing them back".

Although they tend to phrase it a little more professionally when they're advertising it.

The Chicago Library had an amnesty recently and they were lucky enough to have someone return a copy of "The Picture of Dorian Gray".  Why is that lucky, you ask?  Because it was borrowed out in 1934.  Of course the library has a cap on overdue fees, but if they hadn't then the fine would have come to six thousand dollars.  So lucky library for getting a rare item back, and lucky borrower for dodging that bullet!

The library I work at is a reference library so the things we loan out are limited.  But we still have the odd parts of the collection that for one reason or another we let people or other libraries borrow, and working in the finance area I tend to have a fair bit to do with dealing with them when they can't return them.

Over the years I've heard some of the best excuses/explanations for someone not returning an item, so I thought I'd share some of them with you.

• I left my daughter alone with it and a pack of felt tip pens.
• It was in the back seat of my car when I went through the car wash with the windows down.
• I'd rested it on the top of a car at a service station and while my back was turned, they drove off.
• My dog ate it.  No seriously, he ate it.  Half of it's missing, and it was a hardback!
• I lost it when my house floated away.
• I accidentally donated it to charity.
• My bird shredded it to make a nest.

Of course, none of these people were trying to get out of paying their fines, they were just trying to explain why they'd lost or damaged the item in the first place.  That seems to be the main reaction to these things, a deep sense of embarrassment.  It's like they're ashamed of themselves that they broke the library code.   

Take the woman from the article, for example.  Apparently she'd waited for the amnesty not to avoid a fine, but because she was terrified they were going to arrest her for having the book.  Oh love, we don't do things like that.  Send you snarky letters reminding you about your overdue, sure.  Refer you to a debt collector, possibly.  But as a general rule libraries don't have people arrested for overdue books.

Now, talking in the silent section ... we'll take you down for that shit.