Shorter loan period to encourage borrowers to return books

KUALA TERENGGANU:The Terengganu State Library recorded an average of 1,000 unreturned books annually in the past six years due to bizarre reasons such as termite attacks.

As a result, the Terengganu State Library Corporation had to bear the losses of tens of thousands ringgit annually.

To address the problem, the corporation has introduced a measure starting this month, which is to shorten the loan period of every book from 28 days to 14 days.

Corporation chairman Marzialina Mohamed said this would encourage borrowers to read faster instead of putting the books aside after their trip to the library.

She said this would also minimise the chances of the books being lost.

“The measure also allows others to borrow books without having to wait too long for them to be returned,” she said.

The number of unreturned books in the state library was 1,455 in 2011, followed by 1,265 (2012), 883 (2013), 826 (2014), 832 (2015) and 899 (2016).

Marzialina said the corporation would usually send warning letters to borrowers if they failed to return books after four weeks.

She said in most cases, the borrowers would not respond to the letters and they would be blacklisted.

“Some blacklisted borrowers will use the identity cards of their siblings, spouses or family members to register with us again.

“Even if we call or locate them, they will give excuses on why they could not return the books.

“Among the common reasons are that the books were damaged by termites or floods, misplaced or stolen.

“It is hard for us to verify whether these claims are true.”

Marzialina said the corporation had started a campaign to encourage borrowers to return outstanding books recently and retrieved some of the overdue books.