<p>My D lost a library book ,and there is a flat rate fee of 100 DOLLARS ! Is this true at other universities as well ? WOW !</p>
<p>Actually, that sounds inexpensive to me. Library editions of books are costly.</p>
<p>None of my other kids ever lost a library book ,so I wasn’t aware of fees .</p>
<p>Thirty-five years ago the fee was $45 at my college.</p>
<p>That flat rate is probably a pretty good deal if the books from any sort of engineering or science collection. Or if it’s something that’s not in print any more.</p>
<p>Sounds like an arbitrage opportunity.</p>
<p>Bureaucrats do everything wrong.</p>
<p>Since she lost the book, will you make her pay the fee?</p>
<p>$100 sounds like a good incentive to look harder for the book…I’m sure Harvard would rather have the book, not the money. They’ve got plenty of money…</p>
<p>The fee for lost books not only has to cover the cost of the book, but also the ordering, processing and cataloging costs. It’s actually all the latter that are the bulk of the cost of replacing a book. Libraries often lose money on book replacement costs.</p>
<p>Back in the age of dinosaurs (1976) I borrowed a book from the 4-hour reserve shelf at UC Santa Cruz and forgot to return it until a few days later. The fine was 50 dollars and they let me work it off at a fairly low hourly rate. I remember it taking a lot of time. (I’m pretty sure the book was Durkheim’s “Suicide”. Does anybody even still read that?)</p>
<p>How do you lose a library book? I could see losing diamond earrings :), but a book? I would make my kid pay. My kid would have been smart enough to pay for it before it showed up on the bursar bill, but my kid didn’t go to Harvard.</p>
<p>Never lost a library book during my college years…but did accumulate some fines for returning them late. </p>
<p>However, this was actually considered a mark of honor among my college classmates to denote high intellectualism and academic seriousness so was considered a good rather than a bad thing. I accumulated around $40 during my undergrad career. </p>
<p>Unfortunately,…while respectable…a friend who is now an assistant Prof at a highly regarded university in the Northwest region of our continent beat me by a wide margin by accumulating over $65 during his undergrad career.</p>
<p>Don’t lose those “class clickers” either. Big fine for those too.</p>
<p>^^My kids had to buy clickers for those classes which required them. No borrowing; no renting.</p>
<p>I had a huge fight with our local library and was banned from it after one of my kids lost a book, and they billed us over $1000 for it. It was part of a set, and it should not have been lent out. A replacement could not be found through their channels and so they felt they had to order a whole new set and charge me for it. It was actually a discounted price for what they had to pay for the set. I nearly went to court over this, as I refused to pay. I could find the same set for far less on my own, but the library has to go through its own channels to get such books, so they refused to take my offer to replace the set. In the middle of all of this, the book surfaced and we returned it but the library had already bought the replacement set. It’s been sitting in the reference area, for 11 years now, and a couple of years ago, I asked to see how often it has been requested. The answer was a big fat zero. Not a single one of those books was signed out–just for use within the library,mind you,. They were on the floor for general check out when my son borrowed it–he was only 7 years old at the time. There was no sign of the older set that was made intact with the found book, either. Probably thrown out or sold at an annual library surplus book sale for a buck a piece.</p>
<p>Okay, I’m intrigued. What’s a class clicker?</p>
<p>^^I’m surprised a public library would lend out resource material from a set.</p>
<p>Class clicker is what is used by students to indicate answers to questions posed using a computer set up usually on a Smart Board type of device. Each student can indicate their answer, and the teacher actually gets info showing who was right/wrong. </p>
<p>Our primary school (prek-grade three) uses them. They are really good ways to collect data.</p>
<p>The clickers are like wii remotes that students use in class to answer multiple choice questions, take attendance, etc.</p>
<p>Ok thanks! How come I never heard of them before? Are they fairly new? D’s high school has had smart boards for several years but they don’t use clickers. Sounds really neat!</p>