A Pink Floyd CD returned to library – 35 years overdue
THE Laurel branch librarians wished you were here. You, with the overdue library item you forgot to return since your childhood. Don’t worry, you’re not in trouble. You don’t owe any money.
And then you came. Earlier this month, a mystery patron returned a 35-yearsoverdue CD of Pink Floyd’s 1975 album “Wish You Were Here.” After all this time, the CD is still in good condition, with no scratches and only such normal signs of aging as the yellowed CD booklet, said Ella Alonso, a public services specialist at the Laurel branch of the Prince George’s County Memorial Library System.
On the album cover is a stamp dated Jan 4, 1989 - presumably when the CD was checked out, she said.
The library staff didn’t know the CD was missing, said Megan Sutherland, interim chief operating officer at the library system. The system that the library used to track its loaned materials did not capture the CD and other items from decades ago. “We gave up hope that it would ever come back,” she said.
The CD may have been returned on Jan 12, but library visitors won’t find it on the Laurel branch’s shelves. Since 2018, the library has not stocked CDs, Alonso said. “Our customers have moved onto streaming. They don’t have CD players anymore,” Sutherland said, adding, “We tend to focus on popular materials.”
Such a late return has happened only one other time during Alonso’s seven years at the Laurel library, when a patron returned a cassette tape with a yellowed and faded label of Phil Collins’s 1982 album “Hello, I Must Be Going” in September 2021, Alonso said. The library began phasing out cassettes in 2007.
Periodically, “we do get materials that are five years late [or] 10 years late” Sutherland said. “People move. [An item] gets put in a box on the bookshelf and they don’t realize it has a special label that says it belongs to our library system.”
Most overdue items, though, are returned a day or two after the deadline, Alonso said. Perhaps “they just had an extra chapter they really needed to power through and they didn’t have time over the weekend. Or the book is due on Monday and their book club is on Tuesday. They just need to keep it an extra day.”
Alonso added, “They bring stuff back.”
But there is still a hesitation among patrons to return late items. “There were customers who had a fee and were afraid to return materials,” Sutherland said.
“They knew that they owed money and just were never going to come back to the library, even if it was something that had happened a really long time ago.”
But the mystery tardy patron, like everyone who now visits the library, was not at risk of being hit with a hefty late fee. The Prince George’s library system waived all overdue fines from customer accounts and eliminated future fines on July 1, 2020. At that time, the library system joined more than 200 libraries across North America that had eliminated late fines since 2016, including the DC Public Library. Until then, late fines for the Prince George’s library system were 25 cents per day for items checked out on an adult’s library account and 15 cents per day for items on a child’s account.
The fee elimination is part of a larger goal to bring back people who may be hesitant to return to the library because of overdue items, Sutherland said. In 2021, Maryland passed the Building Lifelong Library Learners Act, which eliminated late fees for minors.
Even if the fees were still in effect, the decades-late patron wouldn’t have accumulated a massive fine. “The good news for [overdue patrons] is that we [capped] the late fees to the replacement cost of the item,” Sutherland said, adding, “It wouldn’t [have been] as astronomical as one might think.” A new copy of the “Wish You Were Here” CD can be found for around US$12 online.
The benefit of returning patrons has far outweighed the negligible revenue the library used to collect in late fees, Sutherland said. In fiscal 2020, before going fine-free, the library system collected US$138,000 in library fines and fees; the system’s budget that year was more than US$33 million.
The library system has since found better ways to generate revenue, such as establishing passport acceptance facilities at several branches, Sutherland said.
At Laurel, many patrons have returned after the fine-free declaration, Alonso said. “We had a ton of people coming in that were talking to us about how they were terrified about these fees that were on their account,” she said.
Sutherland added, “We really want you here.” — The Washington Post