8 ms·

This is an "improvement" in the same way that abolishing police reduces the arrest rate.

lalaland1125 5y ago
But libraries do see more books being returned with these systems. Telling someone that they will be automatically able to check out new books if they return the ones they have is really effective in practice. As opposed to the old system where you have to both return the book and pay money so lots of poor people would just ignore the library.
elviejo 5y ago
It really, is* an improvement the same way that netflix, when rented dvds, didn't allow you to take any other dvd until you returned the one you already had. That strategy was enough to bankrupt blockbuster. So it can work for NY public libraries. Maybe if blockbuster had been willing to forgo the late fees income stream they would still exist today.
- SilasX 5y ago
  Wait, what? Blockbuster did end late fees, and it was widely regarded as a disaster, because then people took their sweet time returning rentals (above and beyond the lost revenue): https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna39332696 https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna39332696 >Blockbuster tried dropping its late fees a few years ago, but that didn't work out well because it kept the most popular DVDs out of its stores for long stretches.
  - RussianCow 5y ago
    I don't know this for a fact, but I'd wager a guess that interest in rental movies is mostly concentrated around a handful of titles at any given moment, whereas interest in library books is more evenly dispersed. This means that two people are much less likely to want to rent the same book at the same time, as opposed to the same movie.
    - duskwuff 5y ago
      Libraries do sometimes get a lot of interest in hotly anticipated new titles sometimes. You're generally right that there is a lot more "long-tail" activity than in a video rental store, though -- and it's much easier for a library to maintain a collection of rarely used books.
  - alisonkisk 5y ago
    That article clearly mentions the late fee drop as a side note compared to the disruption of Netflix, and also uses the useless metric of "revenue per disc" which is OK "all else equal", but is nonsense in the context of a switch to longer rental periods / hoarded discs. And apparently BB didn't bother to buy backup discs for hoarded discs. Finally, it's just different, because a book checkout is a 3 week lend but a movie is 1-3 days.
- treeman79 5y ago
  Remember as a teen renting and returning two movies from Hollywood Videos. Me and a friend walked to Dropbox late at night so we were positive they were returned. Got a 245 dollar demand letter a few letter a couple months later. For 2 unreturned movies. Got a lawyer dads friend help me write a letter and the matter was dropped. Went from multiple rentals a week to never renting another video again.
  - alisonkisk 5y ago
    Libraries will do the same thing if they think you lost a book.
- _hilro 5y ago
  > It really, is* an improvement the same way that netflix, when rented dvds, didn't allow you to take any other dvd until you returned the one you already had. Everything doesn;t have to have a simplistic analogy especially when the analogy isn't applicable. It's not really. There is direct financial buy-in from the user. Netflix subscription wasn't 0 cost to user service.
glitchc 5y ago
Deterrence often works until it doesn't, ergo deterrence never works.
- _hilro 5y ago
  > Deterrence often works until it doesn't, ergo deterrence never works. Words don't become true just because you thought of them.
  - glitchc 5y ago
    At least I can think of something to say...
    - _hilro 5y ago
      > At least I can think of something to say... "The flow of quizzes stands upon somebody else's legs." It's not hard to think of something to say. The difference is my sentence was knowingly ridiculous and nonsensical. Words that don't contribute to a discussion are just noise. The equivalent of someone banging pots and pans in the middle of a conversation because they want to get noticed. edit: Brilliantly, you wrote a comment 6 days ago that opened with: "Critical thinking is at an all-time low in Western society."...the irony is palpable.
      - glitchc 5y ago
        It's common for the less erudite to confuse pithy for lack of intelligence. When I had time, I wrote a more complete response to a more neutral comment (see below). Many of us have lives outside Hacker News. My point, as it still stands, is that punishment is meant to deter, and deterrence doesn't reduce criminal activity, history has proven that time and time again. Case in point: The Taliban is back to cutting hands for stealing, a terrifyingly high punishment for a basic crime that gets community service on average across North America (first offense). By your logic, theft should be eliminated altogether in Afghanistan. Is it? Is the per capita rate of theft higher or lower than North America? I leave it to you as an exercise to uncover, with a minor hint: it's higher.
emacsen 5y ago
This isn't an apt comparison. Late fees are a designed to de-incentivize a certain behavior. We have little data on how effective it is, but we know it has costs both for implementation and its effects on patrons. Let's take another example- charging people to use public transportation. We could do away with that as well, and some places have done that- finding that the cost of collection came close to overshadowing the income it generated. Late fees are not part of the structure of a library except when they're implemented as such. NYC will now have the opportunity to see if eliminating the late fees will have an impact on patron behavior or overall cost of running the library. NYC's position is that late fees disincentivize the most vulnerable from using the library. If that's true and eliminating the fees would increase usage and not generally harm the income stream, then NYC- the largest municipal library system in the US, will have been an incredible test case.
hnaccount141 5y ago
When Chicago did the same, they saw an increase in the rate of returns. https://chicago.suntimes.com/news/2019/10/30/20940677/chicago-public-library-no-fines-book-returns-increase-lightfoot https://chicago.suntimes.com/news/2019/10/30/20940677/chicag...
gremloni 5y ago
The underlying metric (books returned) is massively improve though.

But libraries do see more books being returned with these systems. Telling someone that they will be automatically able to check out new books if they return the ones they have is really effective in practice. As opposed to the old system where you have to both return the book and pay money so lots of poor people would just ignore the library.

elviejo 5y ago

It really, is* an improvement the same way that netflix, when rented dvds, didn't allow you to take any other dvd until you returned the one you already had. That strategy was enough to bankrupt blockbuster. So it can work for NY public libraries. Maybe if blockbuster had been willing to forgo the late fees income stream they would still exist today.

SilasX 5y ago
Wait, what? Blockbuster did end late fees, and it was widely regarded as a disaster, because then people took their sweet time returning rentals (above and beyond the lost revenue): https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna39332696 https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna39332696 >Blockbuster tried dropping its late fees a few years ago, but that didn't work out well because it kept the most popular DVDs out of its stores for long stretches.
- RussianCow 5y ago
  I don't know this for a fact, but I'd wager a guess that interest in rental movies is mostly concentrated around a handful of titles at any given moment, whereas interest in library books is more evenly dispersed. This means that two people are much less likely to want to rent the same book at the same time, as opposed to the same movie.
  - duskwuff 5y ago
    Libraries do sometimes get a lot of interest in hotly anticipated new titles sometimes. You're generally right that there is a lot more "long-tail" activity than in a video rental store, though -- and it's much easier for a library to maintain a collection of rarely used books.
- alisonkisk 5y ago
  That article clearly mentions the late fee drop as a side note compared to the disruption of Netflix, and also uses the useless metric of "revenue per disc" which is OK "all else equal", but is nonsense in the context of a switch to longer rental periods / hoarded discs. And apparently BB didn't bother to buy backup discs for hoarded discs. Finally, it's just different, because a book checkout is a 3 week lend but a movie is 1-3 days.
treeman79 5y ago
Remember as a teen renting and returning two movies from Hollywood Videos. Me and a friend walked to Dropbox late at night so we were positive they were returned. Got a 245 dollar demand letter a few letter a couple months later. For 2 unreturned movies. Got a lawyer dads friend help me write a letter and the matter was dropped. Went from multiple rentals a week to never renting another video again.
- alisonkisk 5y ago
  Libraries will do the same thing if they think you lost a book.
_hilro 5y ago
> It really, is* an improvement the same way that netflix, when rented dvds, didn't allow you to take any other dvd until you returned the one you already had. Everything doesn;t have to have a simplistic analogy especially when the analogy isn't applicable. It's not really. There is direct financial buy-in from the user. Netflix subscription wasn't 0 cost to user service.

glitchc 5y ago

Deterrence often works until it doesn't, ergo deterrence never works.

_hilro 5y ago
> Deterrence often works until it doesn't, ergo deterrence never works. Words don't become true just because you thought of them.
- glitchc 5y ago
  At least I can think of something to say...
  - _hilro 5y ago
    > At least I can think of something to say... "The flow of quizzes stands upon somebody else's legs." It's not hard to think of something to say. The difference is my sentence was knowingly ridiculous and nonsensical. Words that don't contribute to a discussion are just noise. The equivalent of someone banging pots and pans in the middle of a conversation because they want to get noticed. edit: Brilliantly, you wrote a comment 6 days ago that opened with: "Critical thinking is at an all-time low in Western society."...the irony is palpable.
    - glitchc 5y ago
      It's common for the less erudite to confuse pithy for lack of intelligence. When I had time, I wrote a more complete response to a more neutral comment (see below). Many of us have lives outside Hacker News. My point, as it still stands, is that punishment is meant to deter, and deterrence doesn't reduce criminal activity, history has proven that time and time again. Case in point: The Taliban is back to cutting hands for stealing, a terrifyingly high punishment for a basic crime that gets community service on average across North America (first offense). By your logic, theft should be eliminated altogether in Afghanistan. Is it? Is the per capita rate of theft higher or lower than North America? I leave it to you as an exercise to uncover, with a minor hint: it's higher.

emacsen 5y ago

This isn't an apt comparison. Late fees are a designed to de-incentivize a certain behavior. We have little data on how effective it is, but we know it has costs both for implementation and its effects on patrons. Let's take another example- charging people to use public transportation. We could do away with that as well, and some places have done that- finding that the cost of collection came close to overshadowing the income it generated. Late fees are not part of the structure of a library except when they're implemented as such. NYC will now have the opportunity to see if eliminating the late fees will have an impact on patron behavior or overall cost of running the library. NYC's position is that late fees disincentivize the most vulnerable from using the library. If that's true and eliminating the fees would increase usage and not generally harm the income stream, then NYC- the largest municipal library system in the US, will have been an incredible test case.

hnaccount141 5y ago

When Chicago did the same, they saw an increase in the rate of returns. https://chicago.suntimes.com/news/2019/10/30/20940677/chicago-public-library-no-fines-book-returns-increase-lightfoot https://chicago.suntimes.com/news/2019/10/30/20940677/chicag...

gremloni 5y ago

The underlying metric (books returned) is massively improve though.