Re: [LM_NET] When do you stop checkout?

[David Lininger <tigerlibrarian@GMAIL.COM>]

SERENA HAYES wrote:
> It would be awesome if I could send home bunches of books with low-income kids to 
>read but it is not practical.  Perhaps I am opening a whole new can of worms, 
>(hope not) but what about teaching kids the good old-fashioned character trait of 
>taking responsibility for their actions.  I am all for forgiveness, at times it is 
>necessary and the humane thing to do.  Can we justify, however,  constantly 
>sending books home with kids who just lose them and then expect the school, or 
>someone else to pay their bill.  What exactly does that behavior  teach children, 
>especially teenagers, about taking responsibility for choices and actions?
>  

I wholeheartedly agree here! Rich or poor, kids need to learn personal 
responsibility, and we ought to exercise it, too. We are responsible for 
many tens of thousands of dollars worth of books that were purchased for 
school use. Yes, kids ought to read over the summer, and public 
libraries are open then. Many of them even have summer reading programs 
just for kids. We need to be pointing our kids to those programs, not 
creating our own competing ones.

The reality is that summer is the main moving time for people in this 
country. Consider this scenario: I have a family with three kids who use 
my library, and if they stay here, all three will be back here in 
August. Suppose I check out four books to each of those kids. Twelve 
books at even $10/book means that I've loaned out $120 worth of books to 
one family. If they move this summer, how will those books come back? 
Most likely they won't. That means that in August the first thing I'm 
going to have to do is add those 12 books to my next book order.

Yes, the family I just described might have to exert a bit of effort to 
go to the public library, but that's their job.

I stopped all checkout last Wednesday, since we get out at 12:45 
tomorrow. Right now there are four seniors who graduated on Sunday who 
have books still out. What do you think are my chances of getting those 
books back? I've done everything but visited their homes - and next year 
I'm going to do just that. There are 15  freshmen, sophomores, and 
juniors with 20 books out, and 16 middle-schoolers with 21 books out. 
I'm going around to the classrooms and interrupting class to get these 
books back. Even then, I won't get them all back before the kids leave 
tomorrow. However, when I go through the lockers I'm likely to find 
several of these missing books.


-- 
David Lininger, kb0zke
MS/HS Librarian
Skyline MS/HS
Urbana, MO 65767
(417) 993-4226
t i g e r l i b r a r i a n  at g m a i l  dot c o m

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