I would like to see stats of how this affected book queue wait times and loan patterns, particularly for books which an entire metro library system only has one

I would like to see stats of how this affected book queue wait times and loan patterns, particularly for books which an entire metro library system only has one or two copies of. They say it increases return rates overall. If that's true, it's good, but let's try to understand why, and what secondary consequences there might be. Nothing was stopping those people from returning the books and walking out without paying their outstanding fines. They could use the exterior book drop (don't libraries still have those?) The idea seems to be that the experience of going to a library with fines outstanding is a kind of intrinsic aversive punishment; you feel guilty slinking into (or around) the library with overdue books, so you try to avoid that by not returning the books. You might even try to hide the books in your house so you don't see them and aren't reminded of your guilt. But it's not the doing away with the fines that matters, it's changing the social dynamic so that nobody ever feels guilty; it's no longer a faux pas not to return books when you should, because there's no longer any punishment. The interaction becomes entirely positive: without fines to think about anymore, you queue all the books you want to read, when one or two become available the cost of checking them out is returning the books you've read and have delayed returning. A typical reason someone might get stuck in library fine purgatory: they queue up a bunch of books, none are available before their old books are due back, and they simply didn't have motivation to go to the library solely to return their existing books. Once they have a fine they don't want to pay and they can't check out the new books, there's no motivation for them to ever return. Historically, there would be: people tended to have a sense of duty and shame so that they'd do the right thing and return the book even if it made them feel bad and they couldn't afford the fees and couldn't use the library anymore, but now I guess nobody has that kind of super-ego anymore. Removing fines encourages those people to re-engage with the library system, but I expect it messes with book queues and makes them worse. Libraries were already struggling to budget book acquisitions. Increasing demand by changing policies so more people use the libraries will only make it more difficult to fund book acquisitions to meet demand.