[Evergreen-general] Auto-renew and Fine Revenue

[John Amundson]

Hi, Elizabeth:

Speaking from a network perspective, we did see a fairly substantial
reduction in fines accrued network-wide. We also had libraries going
fine-free around the same time, so it's hard to determine how much loss was
directly related to auto-renewals.

Auto-renewals are also fantastic customer service, though, and have saved
our libraries and patrons a lot of time and energy.

Here are some general stats:

   - We enabled auto-renewals 7/1/19, which is the start of our fiscal
   year. Our consortium was made up of 148 libraries at the time, and all
   libraries participated in auto-renewals.
   - There was a 45% reduction in fines accrued between 2019 and 2017.
   During 2019, however, we also had 7 libraries go fine-free. Note also that
   this is just accrual and doesn't take into account if the fines ended up
   being paid, forgiven, etc.
   - Between 7/19 and 12/19, auto-renewals saved staff and patrons roughly
   4,700 hours and $16,000 in staff time.

Last year my network put together a short presentation that never saw the
broader light of day. If you're curious, you can find it here:
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/e/2PACX-1vQsJ9jOePtho8LzVLOWnjwWQV5DcW057PxvzQ-5pT9VG-0Y3nB8TbAE8vRgeNiBFoS_VvhnyD-sjPEu/pub?start=false&loop=false&delayms=60000

Financial data is on slides 6 and 7, but the other slides may also be
helpful for anyone looking into auto-renewal implementation.

I think some of our libraries saw auto-renewals as a gateway for going
fine-free. Between the feature and the pandemic, we saw 19 additional
libraries go fine-free in 2020, bringing our total to 80 fine-free
libraries, (out of a current roster of 150 libraries).

Hope this is helpful.

John

John Amundson | Library Applications Supervisor | CW MARS

jamundson at cwmars.org | 508-755-3323 x322 <%28508%29%20755-3323>

https://www.cwmars.org

He/Him/His <https://www.mypronouns.org/he-him>


On Wed, Feb 10, 2021 at 2:38 PM Elizabeth Davis <edavis at albright.org> wrote:

> Hello
>
>
>
> For those who have started using the auto-renew feature, can you comment
> on the loss of fine revenue?  We’re looking to implement it, but are
> curious what to expect.
>
>
>
> Thank you,
>
>
>
>
>
> Elizabeth Davis, MLIS
>
> Pronouns: she/her/hers
>
> Head of Digital Services
>
> Scranton Public Library
>
> Lackawanna County Library System
>
> Northeast Pennsylvania Digital Library
>
> 500 Vine Street
>
> Scranton, PA 18510
>
> Work-570-795-4332
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Evergreen-general mailing list
> Evergreen-general at list.evergreen-ils.org
> http://list.evergreen-ils.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/evergreen-general
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://list.evergreen-ils.org/pipermail/evergreen-general/attachments/20210210/b81b7bc8/attachment.html>