Library Love

There was a time when any mention of the library sparked anxiety in my children. Like most kids, they are forgetful, and the books they borrowed (with every intention of returning on time) would disappear within the mess of their bedrooms or under piles of other books on our overflowing shelves, racking up fines. 

But then something extraordinary happened: After the COVID-19 pandemic was declared, public libraries across the nation, including in my neighborhood, ended the practice of collecting late fees. Not only did this act trigger a cascade of returned books from people unable to pay late fees or too ashamed to show up with books years past their due dates, but it also increased library attendance.

There is a powerful lesson here: Public libraries found that dropping the “free market” approach to book borrowing made their services more accessible. There’s a capitalist fear that people will take advantage of free offerings and steal items, so the only way to enjoy shared resources is to hold individuals accountable in some way. Such an approach assumes the worst of human nature: Allow people to borrow books without a financial incentive to return them, and they will steal them. 

In reality, ending late fees helped not only libraries but their patrons (and funders) as well. For example, the Chicago Public Library system found that forgiving late fees in 2016 resulted in people returning $800,000 worth of overdue materials—and 15,000 new or returning users, prompting the city’s mayor to permanently end late fees. Librarians have reported reduced tensions with patrons, improved morale, and increased goodwill toward libraries. And Chicago’s experiment confirmed the idea that punitive financial measures are neither the most efficient nor the most humane way to serve communities. 

If you have the means, you can certainly buy a book from an online retail giant, purchase a computer from a multinational corporation, or subscribe to a corporate media outlet’s newspaper. Or, you can access all of these things for free at your local library. And now, if you’re tardy, you can return borrowed items without penalty. 

My local library is not particularly well-resourced, but it is staffed by highly compassionate, creative individuals who make extraordinarily good use of their space, offering no-cost services and welcoming all manner of community interactions. The librarians provide passport services, art classes, access to Wi-Fi, open-mic poetry and music nights, guided meditation, children’s story time, and author events. None of these events cost money; enthusiastic participation is all that’s required. 

It’s no wonder that people of all political stripes, except perhaps the most hard-core libertarians, tend to celebrate local libraries. However, what often goes unsaid is that libraries aren’t as much “free” as they are publicly funded and therefore nonprofit. We, the people, through our collectively taxed incomes, pay for these extraordinary spaces that serve us. Libraries assume the best of human nature, and allow us to be unshackled from capitalism’s low expectations of human beings as needing financial incentives to behave responsibly. 

The culture of collective care that our public libraries foster is spreading. “Little Free Libraries,” adorable birdhouse-like structures that serve as communal bookshelves for people to leave and take books, have popped up in neighborhoods all across the United States. The idea that nefarious actors would steal books in order to sell them simply doesn’t enter into the equation. And if someone did such a thing, chances are they are experiencing financial hardship—if selling used books helps put food in their bellies, so what? 

If the idea of sharing books either through publicly funded libraries or neighborhood bookshelves works so well, surely it opens up a universe of options to share other things too. Enter the “library of things,” an idea that’s taking hold and upending the notion of consumerism and individual ownership of all types of things, allowing people to borrow everything from lawn mowers and telescopes to camping equipment. 

The idea that publicly funded collective care—in other words, a sharing economy—might better serve communities than consumerism is a dangerous one. Once we begin to imagine all the ways in which the principles behind public libraries can be applied to society, we threaten the enormous profits that buoy the bottom lines of the wealthy. It’s no wonder that libraries and other collectively funded social services constantly face austerity measures and that significant portions of city budgets are spent on policing and criminalizing poverty. The alternative—pooling our resources to help us all—opens a world of possibilities. Our libraries have shown us that. 

Now that there are no more late fees fueling worry in my kids, there’s little to stop them from bounding joyfully to the library every chance they get. And perhaps each time they borrow a book, they’ll marvel at the wonder of what libraries make possible for us all. 

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Sonali Kolhatkar joined YES! in summer 2021, building on a long and decorated career in broadcast and print journalism. She is an award-winning multimedia journalist, and host and creator of YES! Presents: Rising Up with Sonali, a nationally syndicated television and radio program airing on Free Speech TV and dozens of independent and community radio stations. She is also Senior Correspondent with the Independent Media Institute’s Economy for All project where she writes a weekly column. She is the author of Rising Up: The Power of Narrative in Pursuing Racial Justice (2023) and Bleeding Afghanistan: Washington, Warlords, and the Propaganda of Silence (2005). Her forthcoming book is called Talking About Abolition (Seven Stories Press, 2025). Sonali is co-director of the nonprofit group, Afghan Women’s Mission which she helped to co-found in 2000. She has a Master’s in Astronomy from the University of Hawai’i, and two undergraduate degrees in Physics and Astronomy from the University of Texas at Austin. Sonali reflects on “My Journey From Astrophysicist to Radio Host” in her 2014 TEDx talk of the same name.

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