Cape Town: A novel about loss is no longer lost after it was returned to the Fish Hoek Library six years later during the last Fine Free Week. More than 9,000 overdue items were returned to City libraries during the first week in September.
MMC for Community Services and Health – Councillor Francine Higham said that the third Fine Free Week for the year saw 9,105 items returned, valued at just more than R1,14 million.
These opportunities to return overdue items without a fine continue to be popular and we are grateful to everyone who brought back their items. I want to encourage patrons to return items on time, so we can all share in the adventures and magic.
During the previous two amnesty periods, more than R1,3 million worth of library items were returned. The most overdue item, Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami, is a book about loss set in Tokyo in the late 1960s, and had been taken out on 3 October 2019 from the Fishhoek Library.
The library is also fourth on the list of those that had the most outstanding items returned. Higham said that they need items to be returned timeously, so everyone can have access to them. Prompt returns also support the library’s function as a community resource for reading, learning, and exam preparation.
Notably, individual libraries are responsible for their selections and the focus is on children and teen materials that reflect the diversity of the city as well as the latest and best in publications.
Selections also serve to support departmental projects such as the 1,000 Stories Before School, coding and chess Clubs, among others. Allocation of these materials is based on the needs expressed by librarians as well as knowledge of their collections, the gaps within the collections and the need to enhance collections.