Income from late fines is less than 1% of a library's budget.

Yes, if the items are overdue for a month or more they get a bill for the item. Once the item comes back the bill is wiped. The items pretty much always come back at the replacement bill point (and the ones that don't didn't come back when we still had late fines in place, anyway).

The thing libraries discovered is people weren't checking books out because they were afraid of the fines. They were avoiding the library altogether because they were afraid of getting themselves in a hole, even if we capped the fine max at $5 per book. Ppl didn't like that hanging over them.

Aw yeah. Good night.

That sounds like a lot when I put it that way...

✅ finished building an 1880s outfit for an interpreter from the skin out, incl custom-drafted corset and bodice
✅ led a Banned Books week webinar attended by ~200 library staff, board, etc
✅ moderated a Book Festival panel
✅ gave 5 costume talks at museums & historical societies (2/2)

I discovered this poem that says what I was trying to say, with fewer swears: poets.org/poem/student...

Schrodinger's White Male Writer: both unable to have a successful career in These Times, while also being Not Male Enough when they are successful in These Times.

The number of times someone has walked into our archive and said "I'm sure you must have a photograph of my great-grandmother; she owned a very popular [little local business]." 🥴

If you don't want to read for pleasure or engage in art creation or engage in doing the work activities for your actual job, then fine, but if you shortcut doing those things just to... finish them? What's the point? What are you trying to shortcut TO? How is your life richer by shortcutting those?

I continue to fail at making threads be threads, but I'm just going to embrace it as part of my lore at this point.

You're gonna feed me AI generated ads for AI generated sweaters with impossible 3D kitten faces AI knitted into them? How quickly can I make myself a pair of paned trunkhose and wear them to the fkn grocery store.