Culture
CityLab Daily: The Case for Axing Overdue Library Fines
Also: A scheme to save London after dark, and when brilliant physicists toiled under a beer-can roof.
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Long overdue: Chicago libraries will no longer collect late fees, becoming the largest public library system in the U.S. to do away with overdue fines. The city is also erasing all current outstanding fees for more than 343,000 cardholders whose borrowing privileges have been revoked. The city’s own data revealed that the fines disproportionately affected communities of color and people living in poverty, and that by prohibiting people from borrowing books, the libraries were effectively driving away the poorest residents who need them the most.