Book Bandits Breaking the Bank : Library to Offer Amnesty to Recover Overdue Volumes

When San Diego police entered the downtown hotel room of Frances and William Thomas in August, they came looking for a special kind of contraband. Their search warrant did not list guns or drugs, but overdue library books--398 of them, to be exact.

The unusual raid was a limited success. Police recovered only 36 volumes, and the library has yet to find the remaining 362 books, worth $2,125, that were checked out in the Thomas’ names.

City records show that the couple has San Diego’s biggest overdue book fine of $1,496, but officials conceded that the prospects are very slim that even one penny of it will be collected.

So it goes with the San Diego Public Library, a municipal black hole where the city has lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in missing books and uncollected fines.

Library administrators have been unable to stem the annual loss of thousands of books--public property purchased with taxpayers’ money. At last count seven years ago, the missing books and outstanding overdue fines amounted to a loss for the city treasury of three-quarters of a million dollars.

While they try to start a new computerized system to help rectify the problem, library officials still can’t say how many missing volumes have been checked out by 16,000 people identified as “problem borrowers.” And they don’t know the aggregate amount of overdue fines that are due the city.

“Most libraries have a problem with not getting enough people to read,” library director William Sannwald said. “Maybe we have a problem with too many.”

Why doesn’t the library move more decisively to collect overdue fines and books? “We don’t look on the library as a police state, but as an opportunity for people to read,” Sannwald says.

The San Diego City Council took steps of its own Monday to recover the lost material by approving a series of library “amnesty weeks,” during which most people can return their overdue materials without paying a fine. The first amnesty week, according to a city manager’s report, is recommended to begin Jan. 6.

San Diego joins library systems across the country that, pinched by shrinking budget and rising book replacement costs, are taking different, sometimes novel, approaches to recover their lost or overdue books.

The Brown County, Wis., library this year evolved a one-time “food for fines” program, accepting canned food for the needy from its patrons in place of fines for overdue books. In Baltimore, the Enoch Pratt Library adopted a strategy of having the mayor occasionally telephone scofflaws and try to bribe tardy borrowers by offering them free baseball tickets for the return of books.

Deborah Robertson, with the American Library Assn. in Chicago, said one of the most successful programs was an amnesty week conducted in April, 1983, by the Philadelphia library system. The effort recovered 155,000 overdue books worth $1.6 million.

San Diego Councilwoman Gloria McColl, who proposed an amnesty week here, said she is more interested in retrieving overdue books than in collecting overdue fines. “The books are the valuable resource,” she said.

McColl said she originally intended to extend amnesty to children with overdue books because “they’re ashamed . . . . They feel a little guilty” when they don’t return books.

But the idea has been broadened to include almost everybody because “the purpose of the library isn’t revenue raising, but encouraging people to read,” she said.

Serious Offenders Excluded

Amnesty will not be extended to about 2,600 people like the Thomases, however, who have outstanding fines so egregious that the city has placed them on a special list and submitted their cases to the city treasurer for collection.

Between July, 1984, and June, 1985, the library forwarded 2,591 special accounts worth $197,497--the figure includes the value of the book--to the treasurer’s office, said Queeda Talley, collections manager. Each borrower had at least $100 in overdue fines, and the city was able to collect about $130,000 in cash and books returned. The rest may be impossible to get.

Such is the case of Michael John McFeeters. A year ago, McFeeters owed the city $235 in overdue fines for 47 books he borrowed from the Central, East and North Park branches. Talley said efforts to locate McFeeters have been fruitless, and he is believed to have disappeared from the area.

The city also has been unable to locate Elijah McTerry, who owes $395 in fines on 79 overdue books. Efforts by The Times to locate the men for comment were unsuccessful.

Now, as many as 40 books may be held by a borrower, and they are loaned for a four-week period. No renewals are permitted, and when a book becomes overdue, fines accrue at a rate of 10 cents a day, up to a maximum of $5.

Under the system being phased out, there was no limit on how many books could be checked out by someone holding a valid library card, which any city resident could receive on the spot. Also under the old system, it has been virtually impossible to take away someone’s city library privileges for all branches, because a hot list containing names of borrowers with overdue books was compiled by each branch for its books only. The computerized network being installed is systemwide.

Manual System Inadequate

The manual system was so far-flung and complicated that it was difficult--if not impossible--to know how many books were overdue or the aggregate amount of overdue fines. The key to the records remains what administrators call a “problem borrowers” list, a simple, alphabetical listing of the 16,000 people with outstanding fines, large or small.

There is no indication how many books or the amount of fines that are due. That information is buried in reams of individual files kept on the main floor of the Central Library downtown.

Only by searching an alphabetical file there can someone discover the borrower’s address, phone, number of books overdue, the names of the books and how long they have been overdue. Only then can officials deny further book borrowing to a valid card holder. Library administrators say they haven’t searched all the files and don’t know the magnitude of the problem.

Under both the old and new systems, the first overdue notice is supposed to be sent by mail when the book is 30 to 35 days late; the second goes out on the 49th day.

But there have been problems, according to a productivity analysis by the city’s financial management department. In 1976, the system failed to collect $435,000 worth of overdue books and fines. By 1978, the amount had grown to $710,000. If the trend has continued, the library today would be owed well over $1.5 million. Library administrators say they don’t know what the figure is today.

“The delinquent borrowers problem list totaling over $710,000 in books and fines owed to the city should be reduced by the application of business-like procedures to the overdue process,” the productivity analysis suggested in 1979.

Yet six years after that warning, the library is still trying to implement tighter book circulation controls.

Sannwald said this week that library administrators intend to purge smaller overdue accounts from the files after Amnesty Week, but he declined to say how much the city would lose in potential fines.

The remaining accounts, he said, would then be entered into the computer system to create an easily accessible file of problem borrowers. Library clerks at check-out desks are supposed to check the file to make sure a potential borrower is not a scofflaw, Sannwald said.

People with more than $100 in fines are referred to the city treasurer’s office, which often files suit in small claims court to slap a lien on the borrower’s bank account, property, paycheck or other assets, Tally said.

Some Abusers Hard to Track

While this achieves fairly good results with problem borrowers, some library abusers are transients or others who have no assets, Tally said. She said they leave town or change addresses repeatedly and are unlikely to suffer any consequences even if they are caught.

In the case of Frances and William Thomas, the city took its boldest--and rarest--step by asking police to execute a raid to find missing library volumes.

Frances Thomas said she and her husband should not be held accountable for the library books that were checked out in their names.

She said the couple’s library cards were taken when their wallets were stolen at a house party about two years ago. As a result, they don’t know where the remaining 362 books are.

Asked how it happened that 36 of the books on the list were found in their hotel room this summer, Thomas said the overdue volumes were among other items in seven boxes used by the couple when they moved into the hotel room. She said it was a simple matter of forgetting that the books were there.

“We forgot to unpack,” she said.