New Year without Overdue Fines!

In 2026, the University Library will not charge fees for overdue loans.

What that means specifically

You will continue to receive reminder emails if you do not return printed books on time. No fees will be charged for the various reminder levels in 2026. But if a book is 40 days overdue, an administration fee of 25 euros will be charged and you will usually have to pay for a replacement book.

Why we do this

Charging, paying and collecting fees for overdue loans is a time-consuming and unpleasant process for everyone involved. Its sole purpose is to ensure that books are returned on time so that they can be made available to new users. Currently, around 5% of the books borrowed are returned ten days late on average.

Whether waiving the fees would lead to more books being handed in even later can only be answered speculatively. We would therefore like to experimentally determine this: If you all deal responsibly and in solidarity with the advantage of no longer incurring fees for late loans, we will ask the Senate in a year's time to abolish late fees permanently. If the suspension of fees leads to books being returned significantly later more often, we will reintroduce the suspended late fees from 2027. So it's up to you to decide whether we can all save ourselves the expense of fees!

In addition, the importance of borrowing has declined significantly in favor of accessing electronic media. This is shown by the fact that in 2025 only 1/6 of all students borrowed books at all. However, the cost of collecting fees will remain almost unchanged and will increase again from 2026 for administrative reasons. This is another good reason to start the experiment now.

Questions?
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