0:04 Greetings, thank you everyone for joining us for today's webinar. The future is fine free how libraries are increasing Equity engagement and access for their communities. This webinar is brought to you by Infopeople the source for online learning for all Library people. My name is Veronda Pitchford, and I'm the assistant director of Califa a nonprofit Library group Committed to unleashing the impact of libraries worldwide and our friends at Infopeople are part of our training arm of Califa. We are so excited to bring you this guided conversation on the Y and impact to fine free with what I promise. You are some amazing world and urban Library leaders. If you're looking for more of a how to fine free webinar, you can check out the link on either the Infopeople webinar slides or I will drop a link in the chat for that webinar called Eliminating Overdue Fines a win-win for your library and community. 1:16 So what we'd like to do now is to turn it over to Meg DePriest of the California State Library who's going to serve as moderator for today's panel and thank you again to everyone for joining us. Meg. 1:32 Thanks Veronda. I'm so glad we got everyone here today to talk about this important topic the past few years as an independent Library consultant. I've been partnering with Beth Crist from the Colorado State library and spreading the word that light fast spreading the word that late fines don't work and adversely affect marginalized members of our community as I'm sure you all have noticed we've seen tremendous growth in the number of libraries opting to drop late fines for overdue materials in the last couple of years. 2:01 There's Evidence that late fines result in materials coming back sooner. There are libraries that have never charged finds that have robust circulation and return rates that are no different from libraries that do charge finds. We actually have one of those here today and as we're going to focus on today the library World understands that late fines adversely affect the people in our community who need libraries the most families with lower incomes transportation and scheduling challenges feel the burden of late fines in a way other folks with more economic stability don't when their counts are blocked upon accruing $10 worth of late fines. That means they don't have access to the information resources. They and their families need this is one of the best things about libraries. They respond to their community's needs and aspirations dropping finds is something more and more libraries are doing and they are welcoming back their community members giving them access. Once again to the programming and services. They desire this will be a conversation today among for libraries serving. 3:02 Communities about why they don't charge late fines how this policy change has affected their relationships with their patrons and really a celebration of libraries meeting the needs of all community members regardless of their educational level citizenship status employment housing security or the number of dollars in their bank accounts. Please feel free to type questions in the chat box as we go we'll save those for the end just in order to not interrupt the conversation. 3:29 I'm very pleased to introduce our Today we have Gale spragg ins from Perry County tent library and Tennessee Tim Miller from Pines and planes libraries in Colorado. Andrea. Telly from Chicago Public Library and Patty Wong from Santa Monica Public Library here in California. We're going to start by having each of them introduce themselves and tell them a little tell us a little bit about the communities they serve and I'm going to start with Gales dragons Gail Europe. Okay. Thanks so much. 4:00 You see here a Picture a map of Perry County Tennessee, we are just Southwest of Nashville and what we call Middle Tennessee Perry County is beautiful everybody. It's a rural County lots of farms. Our western border is the Tennessee River and the Buffalo River which is known for kayaking and canoeing throughout Middle Tennessee runs right through the middle of our County. 4:29 So we are one in Fact we are the most sparsely populated county and all of Tennessee you see our population is in the 7800 range and that means because we have 414 square miles in our County we have about 19 people per square mile. This slide shows you a little bit about the percentage of our folks who qualify for the free and reduced lunch participation in the school. 5:02 Cool, so that gives you a sense of the per capita income of our County. We rank out of 95 counties in Tennessee. We rank 81 our per capita income is about 17 thousand dollars. Annually. 5:20 We have two libraries in our little County one for each of the towns in our County so we serve We feel we serve a good number of folks. Annually, we serve about 40,000 visits in both of our libraries and our circulation is about 52,000 items circulated each year about half of our visitors use our technology the Wi-Fi or the computers. You see here are about a third of our folks live below the poverty level. 6:00 And our whole goal is to make things available to this community that absolutely needs us. I have one more stat. I thought was interesting in terms of the 95 counties in Tennessee. 6:17 We rank the last in Tennessee sixty-three percent of our households. Have a computer. 6:25 And the household 54% of our households have access to the internet in the household. So we're right at the bottom the the lowest number in Tennessee. I think that's about it for giving you a little picture of us. Great. Thank you so much kale, and then we're going to move over to Andrea now in Chicago. 6:54 Andrea you might not be unmuted. 6:58 I am not unmuted and now I I hope everyone can hear me. So we're going to go actually to the other end of the spectrum and talk about a very big Midwestern City. So Chicago has a population of about 2.7 million people in the city proper which grows with our with our suburbs and and outer areas the statistics that are shown here. 7:28 About Chicago really go across the city and they aren't necessarily the statistics that we utilize when we're thinking about Library services. So there are 77 neighborhoods in Chicago and what we really do when we're thinking about Library Services is that we look at the city really in terms of Community Based statistics. So generally the north side of Chicago tends to be more affluent. 7:58 Aunt and then as you move South through the city neighborhoods get more challenging socioeconomically in terms of safety and those sorts of things. 8:08 So when I was reviewing this slide, you know in terms of educational attainment 84% High School degree or higher and children living in households receiving Public Assistance at 43% Those seemed a little high to me and I think it's because a lot of the focus We're putting on Library services are necessarily in those communities that you know are within the digital divide are experiencing socio-economic challenges and crime challenges. So, you know, basically that's the reason why we wanted to go find free to be Equitable across the city. 8:54 Great. Thank you, Andrea. Let's move over to Colorado and Tim, please. 9:01 So we call ourselves a Pines and planes libraries, but we actually survive or county in Colorado hear from looking at the map here. You can you can see that our County borders on both the Denver and the Colorado Springs Metro areas. Those are the two largest cities in Colorado. However, we're still classified as either rural or extremely rural so moving on to the next slide. 9:29 Here if you will statistics don't tell the whole story for us in the the northwest corner of our County. We have a very affluent nearly Suburban population at this point in time probably composed of about maybe twenty to twenty-two thousand of the 24,000 you see in the statistics here. 9:57 We do have a lot of Average and an isolated both throughout the county who don't have access to Reliable Broadband to who don't have access to information by other means so we are very vital towards towards helping people even homeschoolers attain their goals in terms of Education or even just entertainment. That's all I have. Great. Thank you Tim. All right Patty Santos. 10:29 Uh, Monica, hi, good afternoon everyone. So Santa Monica is a point 3 square miles there and you can see that we're surrounded by very urban areas. It is a very urban city with a very small population of so it's it works as a small town but actually has a lot of big city environment kind of services and of course where we border the the ocean right there. 10:56 So there's a lot of there's a lot of Haves and Have Nots actually in Santa I can if you could go to the next slide. We are a system with four branches in a main library. 11:08 You can see the population is very small and actually it's a small growth kind of City we have about 70 percent renters and 30% homeowners are population is about 65 percent White and the remaining 35% is very diverse with lots of different languages spoken in the community the other part of the story that's not represented in all of these numbers is that the 405 freeway created a lot of gentrification and redlining in the community. So we have all of the neighborhoods that are served by the branches specifically actually have there's a lot of different economic factors that influence some of our decision-making around around Services. 11:49 We have a 1.2 million circulation about every year and and we are lucky to be one of the library journal's five star libraries about 10 years and All right now, I think I'm going to stop right there. That's great. Thank you Patty. So now that we know a little bit about these four libraries. I'm going to start this discussion by asking you for to talk a bit about why your library decided to go find free three of you did so relatively recently and one hasn't charged fines and years. I'm going to go ahead and start with Andrea from Chicago. 12:22 Sure. Thank you. Thank you so much. So we went find free on October 1st just of this last year. I'm really proud to say actually that the impetus to go find free was brought to us by two of our Frontline Library staff members a branch manager and ahead library clerk. So each year Chicago Public Library has a professional development day in the last two or three years. 12:48 We've had included in unconference in that day and That branch manager and library clerk headed and unconference session of going fine free. So I think they really sort of laid the framework into going fine free. We received a lot of responses positive responses to their unconference. So they proposed going fine free to the administration. 13:12 So that was really it took probably about a year and three months before we actually before we actually went fine free, but we did as I said, I said before we did take a look specifically at the blocked library card users in the city and found that fully one-third of our library patrons on the South and West sides of the city were blocked from using materials because of fines and then that increase to only one in six patrons on the north side of the city and so going find free also occurred at a time when we were having a change in our mayoral. 13:52 Ministration she was doing a lot of fine and fee reform. And so, you know, I think the tsar's really aligned in terms of the library going fine free. So it really very very much was an equity issue. That's great. That's great. And Tim. I know you have haves and have-nots in your area. You want to talk a little bit about why you decided to go find for you kind of started at all. 14:17 Sure, it started before I before I started as director of The District here when I was a library assistant my first job of we're 15 years ago. Now, you know it struck me as as counter to what libraries were about when a parent would come and check out the 25 picture book for their child and then incur a late fees three weeks later then unable. 14:47 To make the payment on those late fees and therefore that child was effectively Prive Dove providing equal and open access to information for both parent and the child. Well a few years later. I moved to this district and and I started to notice some of my neighbors that out do legendary library and Lucy in Lyman, Colorado who had been going fine free for four. 15:17 decades and that's that reinforced the idea that that's return rates wouldn't be affected adversely and we could better support our population and lastly the Colorado State library and I believed leave you mentioned Beth Crist for I believe she was a co-author on a white paper actually reported substantive Eda showed that At going fine free did not we're not affect return rates and and would actually improve our services in some ways. Great. Yeah. Yeah the Beth and I worked really hard on that. I was at Colorado State library before I came here and that was really interesting to do the research and discover that there really wasn't any data to support the policy. 16:09 So Patty, why don't we hear from you about your library going fine free, I believe is it children's right now it His children's and teens. So the Santa Monica Public Library is an NR Library board specifically are very interested in removing barriers to access. So when we took a look and we're also Partners in Youth Development when we took a look at the the number of card holders that we have and 10% of all of our young people were blocked and more importantly. 16:42 We had just lived through a little bit of a shift in and Change I think Andrea mentioned. There's a change in leadership that preempted some of their thinking in Chicago the same thing happened in in Santa Monica and that our library board leadership changed a little bit too. 16:59 We the city had instituted a non-resident fee for all for all people between 2013 and it was rescinded in 2016 because it was so unpopular, but the library actually had already had a stigma the damage was already done the The library was known as a system that was not for everyone. And in fact one principal came to me just after I started in 2017 saying that the library that her entire student body was not welcomed in the library anymore because of this fee and so it was very damaging and we wanted to regain the trust of our community because they didn't feel welcome anymore. So we gathered the information together and really it was a very insignificant amount of money. 17:47 But because but really with 10% of your entire youth population of card holders being blocked a lot of children and young people were disenfranchised. 17:59 We also have a youth well-being report card actually that the whole city contributes to and that reported the steady decrease of young people who could find Santa Monica to be an affordable place to live and their families, so we didn't want to be another contributor to that effort so in 19 the library board unanimously voted to move this forward to city council and city council unanimously voted for it as well. And then the next step in this process is hopefully looking at fine free for everyone. That's terrific and Gail you are in a library that hasn't charged fines for years. Would you like to talk a little bit about your situation and how it came to be? Absolutely. Excuse me. 18:45 I have to give a lot of Credit to my predecessor. Mr. Cpv house who went fine free probably back in the late 70s. She was pretty Forward Thinking and even without a lot of data. She knew that the fines did not impact in any way whether people were going to bring their materials back on time or late. Mostly that's depending on their ability to get to the library. So Transportation can be quite a problem. 19:17 Um sometimes and she was very determined to serve all of our community, especially since I shared those stats. We have a lot of low income families and those are folks who really don't need to have us create any barriers to access to what we can offer at the library. So I was fortunate to come in to my job without having to deal with all of the things that go along with having to collect. 19:47 Fines and tell people no, it's been good. That's great. That's great. So let's move on and discuss how your relationships with your communities are affected by your fine free policy Tim. I'm going to go ahead and start with you this time. 20:05 You want to talk about how that relationship is going now since you dropped fines, Here in Colorado here. We're pretty fortunate because Loretto law allows us to create what's basically like a special district make an independent library and our district and its independence via the voters in in 2000. 20:33 So that meant we didn't have to navigate the institutional relationships that other libraries my Have to navigate, you know such as being beholden to a city council or or a board of County Commissioners have said we're a couple of issues that came about in terms of Patron concerns and ongoing Patron concerns. 21:00 I always like to tell this story one of our friends of the library, you know, that generally method our libraries came up to me after she heard about our trial period and in going fine free and she said she wanted to be in the ground and kill me and and well while I was gonna back at that, I didn't run away. I just asked her why and she kind of echoed what I'd heard from a lot of other patrons that they sort of Saw Librarians as as a moral teacher someone who needed to impart moral lessons or or teach people. 21:41 Who they perceived as doing law wrong as teach them a lesson thing into the conversation with her. 21:52 I said, well, here's here's why we're doing this if you're a kid and your parent is Computing 50 miles then coming back to our town and it can't get to the library and time to return your things in time and you lose privileges then that means As a kid, you don't you don't have access to books. You can't read. You can't access the computers, etc. Alight sort of went on with her and she said, you know when I was a kid that exact same thing happened to me, so she got it after that the other thing we noticed in our communities. 22:33 Is more concerned about fines being our primary source of funding I had to do is kind of help our budget and say finds her about point zero one six percent of of revenues here. 22:50 So it's really not taking a big hit on this and both of those were opportunities to educate the community and allow them to get to know a little more about what we wanted to do is a library in again providing equal Anoka open access to information and an opportunities for empowerment. It sounds like you just had the answers. They didn't quite get it and you just had the answers and the data and the stories to explain it. That's terrific to him. How about you Patty? Tell us about how your community has reacted? 23:24 The community has reacted overwhelmingly in a positive way library card registration for youth skyrocketed. We had just in one year since 2018. We've actually had an almost a 70 percent increase and youth card holders and almost a 60% increase in circulation among young people. We now see families coming together to the library as a team. 23:52 Whereas Before we saw mostly adults coming because the kids were blocked and and and it's really made a big difference the staff coordinated a logo design to really brand the service and they issued a campaign working in concert with our local schools. 24:07 So that elevated our relationship with the school district and we were able to really dig in deeper and do a lot more concerted Outreach with both of them are parochial and private schools as well as our public schools and they're all participating now in Programming their most there are more children attending our after-school programs. One of the big changes that we've seen is actually in our staff which is the staff see this really as a measure not only to bring young people back to the library, but as an active engagement and social justice, they actually use that language. They really see this as an equity action and they also see their role changing to look at policies and procedures in a different way. 24:52 To create more welcoming conditions to encourage our young people and families to come back to the library three years ago. We didn't provide much programming celebrating African-American community members or pride and now these programs and services really fill our calendars. So it's been a wonderful impact. That's terrific. 25:12 So your staff are feeling empowered and they're also not having those awful encounters and having to tell people their their accounts are blocked and that's Affect the girl in your situation you have regulars who are comfortable with this because it's kind of always been that way but I'm sure you have visitors who have a different perspective. Do you want to talk a little bit about your relationship with your community? Absolutely. You're right. It's always been this way here with no fines. We also don't charge for a library card and quite frankly. 25:47 We really have no borders here that by that I mean that we readily we accept residents of nearby counties to come and sign up for library cards with us. And that's one of the big impacts the the counties that border us for the most part still charged fines and still charged or charged fees for library cards, and it's a higher fee if you're not from their County and so we don't charge any of those things. 26:22 So, I found is lots of folks will come over here from other counties where they have they don't want to pay the fees or they just can't or maybe they have an outstanding fine that they they just can't pay so they come to Perry County and we take them so you might say well Gail doesn't that mean that you're bringing people in who have let's say a bad reputation in their own County. And here's the way I prefer to make that. 26:52 To think about that. I want our patrons to all come in here with a clean slate and let us build our own relationship together about what we can serve them with and how they can reciprocate by bringing our materials back and it seems to work really well for us. Terrific. That's great. All right, Andrea tells about how Chicago is reacted to your policy change. 27:18 You guys had a great marketing like when it happened it was I saw it all over the news it was Terrific, I think it was really it was really exciting. I think at the time we were the largest Library System to have gone find free and I mean in a lot of ways, I think it kind of gave smaller Library systems and and larger cities like that idea that well, you know, if if Chicago can do it, you know, we can do it we can do it too. But we've seen some incredible things happen in terms of our relationship with our community. 27:52 I mean we're saying Saying materials and patrons come back. We in the first three to four weeks that we had gone find free. 27:59 We saw this in normal enormous increase in the number of materials coming back like an increase of a hundred and forty percent or a hundred and fifty percent and now that I mean we were expecting it to level off and it has leveled off but really as of the end of January we were still seeing an increase of 94% of materials that were over 6 months that were Overdue by six months coming back so that that publicity campaign or that campaign worked. I think the other thing is is that we're able to have more positive interactions with patrons. I think it was Tim that brought up this idea that we have to be sort of the Arbiter of morality and you know, we even traditionally use the word delinquent when when we had people who own patrons who owned five. 28:52 Finds an old fines and fees and so now I think that we're able sort of to turn that relationship around with the patrons in our communities. 29:02 We have far fewer incident reports, you know over far fewer incidents or disturbances with patrons that you know, get angry when they have a two dollar fine that sort of thing and we're able to talk to patrons about our computers were able to talk to them about our programming we're able to talk to them about Books, and so I think this is really kind of freed the staff up and and and particularly the clerical staff into having a different relationship with the patrons that are coming in the branches wonderful wonderful. So with a fine free policy in effect and knowing how successful this change has been or in Gail situation how successful has been for a while. 29:49 Do any of you have any kind of next steps did You encounter any new issues to tackle, or do you plan to change other policies? I thought I'd start with you Patty because you hinted at it you started with children. So I'll let you go first. 30:04 It did start with children and our library board actually encouraged us to actually pursue all of all ages. But our Council actually was a little reluctant to do so and so but I will tell you that the Big Splash that Chicago Public Library had thank you Andrea and the Big Splash also that we had locally here with lapl also going fine free that created the impetus for the mayor actually to call me the next day and say are we going to make this? 30:32 Has happened and and so that's a wonderful opportunity for us to really do what we wanted to do in the first place which was to create a more Equitable or you know, and I quote old library focused Community focused service for for for everyone. 30:51 It's so we will be working on eliminating fines for for everyone very soon and and working actually with our mayor's office in order to make that happen other things that We are doing in addition to that is now we're thinking about policies like automatic third renewals. Why would we you know, why wouldn't we make it easier for our customers to use our materials and to use them as long as they can especially when there are no holds on them totally changes the communication as Andrea pointed out in Tim pointed out with our community. 31:22 It's positive we can focus on things are services that we offer as opposed to arguing with people and we actually have a stronger thinking about Equity as a Whole we've instituted an equity think-tank within the library to really look at policies and procedures and the training of our staff to bring this to have an elevated conversation and instruction and and deeper thinking about Equity across the board as well as including one of the nice things that's also happened as a result of this is more Community agencies are actually coming to us because they recognize not only what we stand for but that egg. 32:02 D and and the removal of the fines was an indicator of that and then they want to be they want to participate so there are embedding Services directly in the library now amazing. That's terrific that whole thing about biggest library to drop finds. It happened a couple times. It happened in Phoenix and it happened in Chicago. It's been fun to watch the big systems kind of battle for that title. And I love that. It's purring other libraries on Patty are the scale. I know that you have a policy surrounding other fees. 32:32 Why don't you Ooh talk a little bit about what you've done in addition to this. No late fines thing. Okay, in 2017 our board decided that we would eliminate fees for making copies and prints and for sending faxes and that's just been tremendous. 32:52 So here's the way I have been letting our patrons know a patron send something to the printer and they print out a few pages and they come up to me and they automatically Reach for their wallet or their change person say what do I owe for that? And my response to them is this in the past? We used to chart we would have charged. Let's say a dollar fifty for this what you've printed here, but we stopped charging that and now instead we accept donations for our friends of the library. And if in the future you have nothing to donate, please still come here. We're happy to serve you this way and make your copy. 33:32 He's and send your faxes. And what was that has resulted in has been we bring in ten times more in donations each month than we ever did in fees for copies and faxes. So you've actually affected your budget in a positive way by dropping a fee. That's pretty amazing. Absolutely. 33:55 You're generating a lot of Goodwill to a whole lot of good will and it's You know, I just feel like I love not charging them for anything. So at this point, I don't charge for anything. That's great. And I just love it and it well it amazes me how often people like if they just make one copy. I'll say in the past. We would have charged 15 cents for that and they pull out a dollar you go. You know, how much change do you like and they say no change or they pull out a 5 dollar bill? Yeah, that's great. That's great. 34:32 That's inspirational. So Andrea, how about you and Chicago any plans in the works on the horizon things you've learned? Well, we I think that we've got an incredible advocate in our new mayor Lori Lightfoot. 34:49 And so we are her one of her North Stars is really all about equity and access and so so in order to create the Level Playing Field for finds the Mayor also infused our budget with enough money to be able to open every one of our branch locations on Sunday. So we have 81 locations across the city of Chicago so through 2020 will be opening our locations on Sunday. So this you know allows patrons and every neighborhood to be able to access their their Library seven days a week. 35:29 I think the other thing that's important is that in this doesn't necessarily We have to do with the library, but another thing with fines and fee reform is that you know, driver's license suspensions have been eliminated for some for some people due to their inability to pay fines. The cities created a more payment options that are flexible and affordable. We used to double the fines if you didn't buy your city stickers for your cars. 36:02 And get your cars booted and I think that what has happened here is that again? These are the people who need these Services the most if you're out of a job and you are blocked from using your library, you can't come to the library to get help to look for that job. If you know the same thing if you are suspended if your driver's license is suspended you can't go to an interview. So I think it's being look look. 36:32 At very holistically in Chicago, that's great and in Colorado Tim, what's On Your Horizon this is there anything that you learn? It's informing your planning for the future. Oh, yeah, and it's it's kind of an ongoing movement. I guess. 36:48 It's somewhat began with with fines and figuring out that I had a relatively aggressive governing board our Board of Trustees who was sort of willing to move forward with with our experimentation or Ideas, I think adding and I care a similar philosophy as Patty mentioned. 37:09 We should be in the business of removing barriers to access to information as I put it to be in the in the business of saying yes, or when people how they can use our services rather than saying what they can't or shouldn't you and rewriting policy is a great way to do that and he mentioned Renewals will be less than a year ago. Now we previously made are all allowed patrons to do. I think you were three renewals. We've moved that up six renewals, but we've also instated Auto renewals or integrated library system will audit automatically renew that that's fantastic for patrons patrons love that. 37:59 Their policy changes are check out limits operative phrase is one bird in the hand is better than two in the bush. We won't well, the burden hand effectively is circulation statistics. If you're looking to you know, provide proof of return on investment. 38:21 Well, if you want to increase your search sand if you want to provide more value to your community then Having something sitting on your shelf collecting dust. Whereas somebody who wants it can't have it because of check out woman's ass doesn't work. 38:39 So those are a couple of primary changes you've made just to touch a bit on on what Gayle Sayers said moving forward love the idea of making all live Library Services free to the individual and the main reason for that is X payers have Eddie paid for it. Our tax paid ears did us a huge favor and said we love libraries so much that we want to make you an independent strict and we're also going to give you funding that cities and counties can't hook that's dedicated funding. So what I'd like us to do is move away from hurting those fees for copies and faxes. Eventually. It's been interesting to see kind of a Divergence in libraries some have gone with a business model. 39:28 of charge more for everything to gain revenue streams definitely bringing in the other direction and saying we should go free so that's kind of the next I guess big policy change hopefully on the horizon for great thank you Tim thank you well I want to thank all four of you for sharing your experiences with us I'm sure this conversation is generated thoughts and questions from those who are listening and just a reminder that we're kind of focusing more on the wise in this webinar rather than the nitty-gritty how we at are going to share all of our email addresses and we welcome you to contact us with any kind of detailed questions about that you know how do I do this but I'm going to go ahead and ask varanda what kind of questions we've been receiving or you just throw them out and panelists jump in you know it might get messy we might both talk at the same time but feel free to answer something really sticks out to you go ahead varanda thank you so much Meg I had a little giggle because you sounded like you were describing a WrestleMania You're so so far. We've done really well. We're not stepping on each other, but we'll see what happens. Now. I'm better now, so that'll probably change. So thank you to all our panelists for their amazing amazing presentations. And we've had some great questions and comments roll in from the audience sharing their own stories. 40:51 So Meg this one might be more for you because of your deep work and find Free and it may be something we have to get back to people about their any because I don't think any of our panelists have examples of income-based find free policies as we talk about the economics of this issue you aware of any magic of income-based as in kind of like a sliding scale at that is what I believe is right, you know, it's funny. I it's really interesting. 41:26 I have never I mean Sure, it might exist. I haven't heard of sliding fail scales for things like this. I think on an informal basis anybody who works the front desk has sliding scales in the back of their head and I wouldn't be surprised if there are people are saying just whatever you can pay or don't worry about it, but I have never seen a formal sliding scale fee or fine situation. I think libraries just they seem to be it's either we're going to charge fines or we're not but again, that's just based on my survey of the literature in the news as it. 41:58 Owls in okay, and any of our panelists have y'all heard of anything? I would assume we're all in the same boat since we've chatted a bit about this issue. 42:10 No, okay. Yeah. Well, I'm going to move on to our next question and some of you may have touched on this a little bit but I happen to know you're great experiences and around this and cosmic alignment. 42:28 How do we present the opportunity to go find free to Administration and to local government leaders, and I know some of you talked about Aligning with particular things going on in the city Etc. Anyone want to grab that one? Because I know you have some great experiences with that. 42:52 This is Andrea. I'll jump in just for a second when we were investigating going fine free or researching going fine free and you know looked at the equity issue then we definitely looked at the amount of you know, what that Revenue stream was and you know, I think it might have been Tim that mentioned it. I mean it's a teeny tiny part was a teeny tiny part of our of our overall budget I think for Chicago. 43:21 Less than 1% 1% right and so and so, you know, but however the amount of so I you know, I think if we and these are going to sound like very very big numbers. So forgive me, but you know, all of that eight hundred thousand dollars worth of fines that we may or may not have received. 43:41 We had four point nine million dollars worth of books that were out there that weren't being returned to the library and that was a pretty compelling argument because there was this city e asset that was sitting out there and and the the amount of materials that we've seen come back really kind of made our argument for us. So, you know, I think I think it really looking at the data the data will tell the story. Yeah, that's usually what Beth and I advised its gather your data find out how much it costs to gather your to collect late fines gather stories from your patrons, San Francisco Public Library looked at their block card rate by neighborhood. 44:21 And figured out that the low-income neighborhoods had the highest block card rate. You take that to your city council. That means something it tells the story. So it's kind of getting your ducks in a row College State library on their website has kind of a fine so late fines FAQ and they actually provide templates where you enter your data in and prepare an infographic and give it to your city council or your governing body. Get your get your ducks in a row and your stories and your data together. 44:52 Wonderful. That's a great what library people a couple of other questions that have come in one. I want to as we talked about how to present and get the data ready for local government leaders just in case and in this may be the case with the question. We just had about presenting it to admit maybe someone was referring to Administration internally, and I want to just quickly go back to Andrea from Chicago Public Library. 45:21 Raised and how they started find free was from a presentation. In fact, correct me if I'm wrong Andrea from a staff member at all staff day or something. Am I correct? It's absolutely correct. Yes. It was a bit was Frontline people who are seeing the impact and the effect of fines on patrons that were coming through the door. 45:43 And so, you know again, it's that family or you know, those parents who are you know wanting to have you know book It's in the hands of their children. They would check out 25 books at a time. You know it if you get a maximum, you know, if you're up to the maximum of ten dollars, which is Lazar fine threshold. You can have a 250 dollar, you know Bill essentially for the library. So it really was our library staff that wanted by and large that wanted to remove that barrier from our patrons great. Great and just a quick question. 46:21 For me around that so and Andrea not to put you on the spot. But what was your as a commissioner of Chicago Public Library your initial reaction in hearing that this kind of movement from staff wanting to do this. I was incredibly proud of them. 46:42 I mean I have to say when I was a branch manager, I you know would readily way fights in about really He didn't hesitate because I think just philosophically, you know, I felt like the the public library should be accessible to everyone and so, you know, I think that it was a movement that was begun by Library staff who really had the same idea and felt that the public library usage and that, you know, that was a right rather than a privilege. 47:19 I think was just very Again, okay, wonderful. Well, that's great to hear. You know, as we have Equity diversity and inclusion top of mine and libraries being a vital part of local government. Do I would love to hear from you all and in terms of equity equity and economic ethnic and just best serving communities. How did how has going fine free? What? 47:51 Does that had on better serving different communities for you guys? 47:57 So this is Patty and so one of the key things so that st. Anne's the principal who came to me to tell me that her entire student body was not welcomed because of the fees and specifically the non-resident fees but also was so delighted when we went from free for youth because a hundred percent of that entire Community are Spanish speakers. 48:22 And so that meant that we were able to reach a group of people who felt so disenfranchised by by our policy than we really could to think about changing that that up a little bit. It just made a huge difference. We see more diverse community members coming into the library than ever before and a lot of that has to do with the fact that the families now see that youth card as actually a family card. They don't just see it for children. 48:51 So it's a very it's created a whole different kind of Dynamic of community members coming in together. That's great. That's great. Anyone else want to jump in? 49:06 and that question Okay, another question is coming and it's around creating internal by in meaning staff buy-in as if you guys did not know what internal buy-in with Excuse me. So if people could describe, you know, obviously it's a stair step process, especially if you know that has been a way to do it. So does anyone want to talk about internal buy-in and how they did that what their strategies? 49:39 Or to do it. This is Gail from Tennessee. I just want to make a comment because as I've told you I was lucky that I came in and there were no fines and since then I've only gotten rid of more fees but think about staff members and just as an aside my whole background before I became a librarian was in human resources. 50:03 So think about people who apply for jobs at libraries probably the last thing on their mind is it they're going to become a collection agency for area. So if nothing else this was the peak for people for whom conflict avoidance is a natural process. 50:24 This would relieve a whole lot of that from your staff and maybe they weren't prepared to talk about it and tell you how Comfortable they were with it, but it's it's got to relieve some unspoken anxiety. That's my piece. 50:43 Great. Thank you. Anyone else, you know Veronica there are some staff. I think that actually feel as I think a couple of our comments in the chat box have indicated that going that finds her away to teach young people responsibilities and there are staff that feel that way too. 51:04 I think one of the things that we did was engage the staff in developing talking points for us to use with the customers, but we also It a mitigation process which is we created a reading off your fines program just before we implemented find free for youth so that there was a transition so that the staff actually could get used to actually being in that less punitive role and and so they could actually have a comment a good conversation with the community about why we're doing this and they actually came up with the process and they actually came up with the talking points to so it really wasn't ownership. 51:43 Of the process from beginning to end. That's great. You know, one of the one of the best things I heard from I don't remember which Library I wish I could but about the whole teaching responsibility thing is it's not the library's mission to teach responsibility. It's the library's mission to connect people to information and resources and a lot of times that can get you out of a sticky conversation about this whole, you know, if you don't charge finds people are just going to keep the books situation. 52:12 Not the library's role to be teaching morals and values. It's our role to connect people to information. This is Andrea. And you know, I think another thing is is that we don't you know, we look at the the materials as the shared responsibility of the community while to share as a responsibility of the community to share with if a patron doesn't return a book so we have automatic renewals up to 15 times. 52:42 Times so yeah Patron can keep sorry about my phone ringing a patron can keep a book up to let me see if I can get this done. Well, please ignore the phone ringing through our whole system. 53:06 So but if the book isn't returned, I mean we do have eventual due dates and The book isn't returned after seven days. I believe it goes lost. And then at that time the patron can't use the library Services until they do return the book. I mean All Is Forgiven when they do return the book, but you know, we really made a very purposeful decision that we wanted the material and the patron back. 53:35 So Andrea, that was likely someone calling to thank you for being fine free. No, yes echoing your this is in the universe. We just got another really interesting question that I can impart answer as a patron. Do you any of you have Insight on the psychology of why patrons are more likely to return items when no fines are charged and I can I have personal experience with this. 54:05 As a patron of one of the libraries on this panel, but I'd love to hear from you guys first you say why they're more likely to return the rest. Yes in science on why page ones are more likely to you know items coming back in to return to return those items when no fines are charged. 54:25 It's more of the onus on the patron though was those patrons who might have already felt a little more guilt or responsibility for returning them won't return them even more. In fact those patrons often want to do Penance to speak what Gail was talking about. So if you say, okay, no worries. We don't have any late fees anymore. 54:49 They're donating to the Friends the library jar or donating to the foundation or whatever just As they need to do monetary and it's in the onus on in the choice on the individual. I think often gives them more agency and inspires them to return those on time. Very anyone else speak to that. I work with someone. I'm sorry about to say, okay. I was just gonna say there's shame attached with owing money and having your card block and when your card is unblocked and you're told please we welcome you back to the community bring your materials back people. 55:22 I think the psychology is I feel come again. I'm not ashamed they're telling me they want me to come back and return these and they forgive me and so I think it's just a really warm relationship and it's a warm welcoming back. That's exactly what I was in my personal experience. I mean, this is terrible to say as a librarian, but I was to the point where I said, I can only check out e-materials because it'll return I don't have embarrassed. 55:51 Am I telling all of these people but Was it I'm just telling you like page as a patron. I am only going to do e because I don't want to incur fines and also people know I'm a librarian when I go there and I'm embarrassed. So and also it but it became you know, I think it's not a point of consideration is great for some people after that. If a pic that mindset on which will find free brings them back to oh I get this from the library. 56:24 You know, they're thinking through any implications as a page. Does that make sense? Sure does no, I you know, I'm also thinking about the physical barrier of the circulation desk and the reference desk when we're standing behind those desks people that can still be a little bit intimidating. 56:44 I mean how many of us have had a patron walk up to us and say oh, I'm sorry to bother you, but can I and so, you know, I think that again, you know Removing this idea that you know, somebody's coming in because life got in the way and they couldn't return their book on Tuesday, but they're bringing it on Thursday, you know kind of freeze everyone up. I mean, it really kind of removes read it removes the psychological barrier. 57:13 I think right now we're on the I'm looking at the time and I want to be respectful of everybody's our that they've given to us and I wanted to make sure that we have time to say thank you and share this information. I saw a lot of questions coming in about, you know, especially this last one about what if your budget is more than one percent. We have some great advice and help in that other webinar that we did earlier and there's a link here and this webinar is being recorded. So you'll have access to that link in the recording of the webinar. It's also at the info people website. So just wanted to make sure I got that out there. 57:54 Also, all five of us are very willing to be contacted any questions about your own Library about research about data about your community about Equity. Just please reach out to all of us were very happy to I want to thank all four of you for joining us has been such a pleasure to meet you and have this conversation with you. What a pleasure. 58:18 So thank you to Tim and Gail and Andrea and Patty and thank You to you to beg you thank you Rhonda. Your expertise was crucial to this to this program. So thank you. Well, and again, this webinar is being recorded So if you want to listen to Veronda and Me Love on each other some more you again you can listen to it and it will be sent to you I believe and I just also wanted to thank Infopeople for hosting us and mostly thank you. Thank you to all of you who joined us. It's been great. 58:55 Thank you. Have a good one. Thank you. Bye bye.