Public Libraries: Far Fewer Toronto Library Customers Fail to Pick Up Holds

Toronto’s library system has seen a dramatic drop in the number of people failing to pick up requested materials since a new fee system was brought in last summer.
Until July of last year, library users didn’t have to pay if they didn’t pick up the holds that came in for them.
But the library changed that policy in part because of the hundreds of thousands of books, DVDs and other media that were sitting on shelves waiting for someone to claim them each year.
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According to [Katherine] Palmer [Toronto Public Library’s director of planning, policy and e-service delivery] the library saw some 192,970 holds left on shelves from last September through June of this year.
That may seem like a lot, but Palmer said it’s less than a third of the 607,498 held items that were not picked up during the same period the year before.

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