County Attorney teams with library to get more overdue books returned
By Jennifer Acosta Scott

It’s a comon ocurence among avid readers: A book is read cover-to-cover and ends up hidden in the drawer of a nightstand, under the front seat of the car or at the bottom of a pile of laundry. It’s an innocent mistake, but when the book is the property of the Harris County Public Library, things are a little different.

Non-returned books were resulting in increased costs and reduced availability for the county’s 26-branch library system. So library officials teamed up with the Harris County Attorney’s office and developed a new system for collecting overdue materials. The value of the materials returned since the new collection system began in mid-2004 is more than $1.1 million.

“It’s just a better way of being able to recover our materials,” said interim library director Rhoda Goldberg. Harris County’s library collection system received a Best Practices Award from the Texas Association of Counties in 2007. Under the library’s original system, monthly letters were sent to patrons with unreturned materials at 30, 60, 90 and 120 days past their due dates. If the item was still not returned after 120 days, the case was closed, and no further action was taken. Under the new collection system, the final letter was eliminated and the third letter from the library was replaced with a notice from the county attorney’s office.

“It’s really a pretty friendly letter,” said Harris County District Clerk Theresa Chang, who was serving as division chief in the county attorney’s office when the program began. Chang also spearheaded the collection program. “It just tells them the possible consequences of not returning the books – mainly fees and fines, but also legal action.”

However, Chang added, the county had no plans to prosecute anyone for failing to return library materials. Rather, the idea was to use the county attorney’s letterhead to lend an “aura of authority” to the notice. “It was an understated way of reminding people that this is county property,” Goldberg said.

In 2005, the first year of the collection program’s existence, over $315,000 worth of overdue materials were returned to the library. 2007 has been the most effective year so far, with almost $447,000 of materials collected. Those figures don’t include overdue fines and other library fees.

Materials pursued for collection included books, as well as DVDs, CDs and laptop computers. The Harris County Public Library allows patrons to check out books for two weeks at a time. Two renewals of two weeks each are also allowed, if no one else has requested the book. The new collection system required very little additional manpower. The biggest task was the development of a new computer program that would send information about patrons with books overdue by 90 days to the county attorney’s office. “We designed the program so we can take the library data and pop it into the database we have in our office,” Chang said. “Everything’s automatic.”

Reducing the number of notices from four to three also saved money on postage, Chang added. The system tried to make the return as easy as possible for patrons. Each letter was customized with the address and phone number of the borrower’s local branch, and fines could be paid to the library rather than going through the county attorney’s office. Some patrons returned their materials without paying their fines, but no further action was taken against them.

The new collection method actually encouraged many people to return to the library, Goldberg said. Some had wanted to start using it again, but didn’t come back because they believed they would owe the entire cost of the book. In reality, their only expense was the returned book, plus the overdue fine, which tops out at $3 per item.

“These are our neighbors, our friends,” Goldberg said. “These are the people we want to use our library.”

Goldberg said the library has also made efforts to prevent overdue books by sending e-mails to patrons three days before their books are due. E-mails are also sent to people when a requested book has arrived. Like the collection system, the library’s e-mails are aimed toward getting materials back and encouraging people to take advantage of their library privileges. “The library is a community resource,” Goldberg said. “We want to be busy. We want to be tired at the end of the day.”

Jennifer Acosta Scott is a freelance writer in Parker County.