HENDERSON LIBRARY FINES MEETING ENDS IN TEARS OVER A COOKBOOK
Cookbook is 47 days overdue. Fine is $3.20. The crying went on for some time.
A public meeting at Henderson Library on the future of overdue fines turned, on Tuesday evening, into what one attendee called "the worst night I've had since the Pak'nSave car park flooded".
The meeting had been called to discuss scrapping fines on the grounds they put low-income families off borrowing books. The dozen ratepayers who turned up, clutching their library cards like passports, did not agree.
Margaret Coombes, 71, of Sunnyvale, told the room that fines were "the only thing keeping this place from going to the dogs". She then revealed she was owed an apology by the library over a 2019 incident involving a Maeve Binchy she swore blind she'd returned. The librarian on duty, Pip, declined to relitigate.
Things got worse when Denise Whittaker, 58, admitted through tears she'd been hiding a copy of Annabel Langbein's Free Range Cook in a drawer since August because she couldn't face the desk. "I just want to bring it back. Every time I walk past, Pip looks at me." Pip, asked to respond, said she looks at everyone like that and it's just her face.
A council spokesperson confirmed the fines review was "ongoing" and that the library would run an amnesty week in November, during which Mrs Whittaker is encouraged to come in "without making a scene".
The cookbook remains in the drawer. Gerald would have returned it on the Monday.
The meeting had been called to discuss scrapping fines on the grounds they put low-income families off borrowing books. The dozen ratepayers who turned up, clutching their library cards like passports, did not agree.
Margaret Coombes, 71, of Sunnyvale, told the room that fines were "the only thing keeping this place from going to the dogs". She then revealed she was owed an apology by the library over a 2019 incident involving a Maeve Binchy she swore blind she'd returned. The librarian on duty, Pip, declined to relitigate.
Things got worse when Denise Whittaker, 58, admitted through tears she'd been hiding a copy of Annabel Langbein's Free Range Cook in a drawer since August because she couldn't face the desk. "I just want to bring it back. Every time I walk past, Pip looks at me." Pip, asked to respond, said she looks at everyone like that and it's just her face.
A council spokesperson confirmed the fines review was "ongoing" and that the library would run an amnesty week in November, during which Mrs Whittaker is encouraged to come in "without making a scene".
The cookbook remains in the drawer. Gerald would have returned it on the Monday.