• Journal of Korean Library and Information Science Society
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• v.51 no.1
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• pp.349-372
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• 2020

Regardless of East and West, public libraries provide various services to their communities based on collections. The decisive reason for local residents to visit public libraries is to access and borro w collections. An important condition maintenance to support these activities and services is the library circulation(usage) rules. Therefore, this study compared and analyzed the library membership, maximum loan items, loan period, loan reserve and renewal, overdue fines, disposal of lost and damaged items, loan of non-book materials, loan regulations for the disabled. And after checking the relative deviations in connection with the library cases of major developed countries, this study proposed the improvement of circulation rules. In order to minimize public complaints about circulation services and to relieve the burden of practitioners such as personnel disadvantage due to administrative audit for non-recoverable ite ms, public libraries must faithfully rearrange the circulation rules and regulations.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Library and Information Science
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• v.58 no.3
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• pp.145-168
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• 2024

This study analyzed the current status of late fee policies for overdue books in public libraries in the United States and Korea and derived measures to improve the late fee policy in public libraries in Korea. Therefore, this study analyzed the current status of late fee policies in public libraries in Seoul, Korea. The results indicated that 14.8% of public library operators and 21.6% of public libraries in Seoul had late fee policies. In the US, the American Library Association and major public libraries were found to have recently eliminated late fees. The main justification for this policy change was their recognition of late fees as a form of social inequality. In fact, this study confirmed that the elimination of late fees led to users' increased access to information. This study also found that public libraries in the US turned books not returned after a certain period into lost items and imposed fines for lost items. In conclusion, this study suggested integrating measures for late fees and lost items to manage non-returned books and clarifying the legal basis for such measures.