The Return of Lt. Bookman

By Andrew Grabois - Jan 07 , 2008

Remember the Seinfeld episode from season three about the library cop?

The New York Public Library contacted Jerry because they claimed he had taken out a copy of Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer in 1971 and never returned it. The NYPL sent its crack “Investigaton Officer,” Lt. Bookman, to retrieve the overdue book (or the fee, which was thought to be as much as $100,000 dollars). Bookman (played to perfection by Philip Baker Hall) is determined to make an example of Seinfeld, whom he accuses of belonging to that post-hippy, yuppy, hedonistic crowd that holds nothing sacred but being “flashy, making the scene, flaunting convention.”

Well, life is again imitating art.

The New York Times reports that over nine hundred library systems across the country are employing a collection agency to recover overdue materials and fines from delinquent patrons. One of those libraries is the Queens Borough Library System, the nation’s largest. Queens began to use the services of Indiana-based Unique Management Services, Inc., a collection agency specializing in recovering library materials and late fees (some librarians prefer to call it “extended-use fees”, while others describe it as “quarter-a-day rentals”). Queens signed on with Unique Management back in 1996, and since then it has recovered $11.4 million in materials and fines. The New York Public Library, which includes branches in Manhattan, the Bronx, and Staten Island, is another happy client of UMS, which has recovered more than $750,000 in materials and late fees for them in the fiscal year that ended in June.

UMS is successful because it reports patrons to credit bureaus. Delinquent patrons (in the case of Queens, those that have ignored or missed four recovery notices) are contacted by letter and phone. According to the Times, about seventy percent of those contacted by UMS ultimately return some of the overdue materials or pay part of the late fees. UMS does not report children or their parents, or debts less than $25. UMS says that less than ten percent of patrons contacted are reported.

There is some debate as to what credit bureaus actually do with this information. While UMS considers outstanding library fees a “legitimate debt” that is “credit-reportable,” TransUnion is the only one of the big three credit bureaus to accept reports from the collection agency, and they take note only of debts of $50 or more. The Times quotes an executive at Equifax, one of the other big three credit reporting bureaus, as saying that it would be “unfair” to put library debts on consumer credit reports because “not all libraries use a debt collector, and consumers whose libraries do not use them would have an advantage in the marketplace over people whose libraries do.” It turns out, according to the Times, that Equifax does in fact receive reports from UMS, but “discards” them because they don’t have a numerical code to categorize library debts.

Whether or not a credit bureau actually puts library debts on consumer records might be a moot point. If, in the course of their investigation into an individual’s credit-worthiness, a credit bureau finds an outstanding library debt, they could determine that the individual is a credit risk and recommend that their clients not extend any loans.

Some in the library community are not comfortable with the collection agency approach. Jane Montalto, head of the Queens Library’s collection of musical scores, told the Times that the library should not be in the business of punishment: “It’s supposed to be a place of pleasure and learning.” The Queens Library does, in fact, recognize that playing tough with children, anyway, is counterproductive (not to mention terrible PR). Through a program called “Read Down Your Fees”, children under seventeen can earn $1 per hour against their late fees by reading under the watchful eye of a librarian. In the last fiscal year, Queens forgave late fees totaling almost $25,000 from 16,612 children.

The New York Times itself is also very uneasy with libraries using collection agencies. In an editorial (“Throwing the Book at Them”), the Times described the use of threats from collection agencies as “chilling”, and thought that “hardball tactics” just “don’t feel right for a public library”. The paper thought it would be more “appropriate” to shame delinquent patrons by posting their names at the front desk or online, and perhaps making patrons “prove that they are responsible” before they could take out multiple items. As a last resort, the editorial board thought that libraries could take credit card information from patrons with a history of tardiness, and charge the card when late fees exceeded $25.

I don’t know about you, but the more “appropriate” alternatives suggested by the Times sounds only marginally less draconian than the use of collection agencies.

Perhaps the last word on libraries and late fees should come from Jerry Seinfeld himself. Midway through the library cop episode, the comedian riffed on how some of us take advantage of libraries:

What’s amazing to me about the library is it’s a place where you go in and you can take out any book you want, and they just give it to you and say bring it back when you’re done. It reminds me of this pathetic friend that everybody had when they were a little kid who would let you borrow any of his stuff if you would just be his friend. That’s what the library is. A government funded pathetic friend. And that’s why everybody kind of bullies the library. I’ll bring it back on time … I’ll bring it back late. … Oh, what are you going to do? Charge me a nickel?