Mine’s about $5. Most of it was from this summer except for 10 cents that’s been on my record since 2003. They usually don’t inform me of overdue fees when I check out new books, so that’s why I haven’t paid off that 10 cents yet. And, um, I only had $3 in my wallet the last time I went, so I didn’t pay it that time, either.
I’m sure that’s only a fraction of what some people owe (or have owned in the past). Do you owe enough to have a wing of the library named after you? Confess!
We-ellll, I once had an audio book out forever and I ended up owing $20. Since then, they’ve changed the fines so that the maximum is a dollar per book.
When I was a kid, the librarians were mean. If you took a book back late they were very snarly about it.
The library in this county, on the other hand, they apologize for the fines and if you get all worried about them and feel like a heel they say that overdue books keep them in business.
I love this library! 
Before I moved to my current location, I went to the public library, told them I was moving, and asked if I could cancel my library card. The guy looked at me like I was crazy and said that they didn’t do that so I said, huh, okay, then, uh, thanks and have a nice day.
About six months after I moved, they somehow tracked me down and said that I either had to return a book and pay a $10 late fee, or pay the replacement cost. I had checked out that book. Since six months had passed, I couldn’t remember whether I had returned it, though it would have been very odd for me not to, because I’m very conscientious about returning library books on time. I was quite certain that I hadn’t packed it, or unpacked it, but it was possible that my MIL or husband had packed it, and the hubby had unpacked it. I checked all the shelves and the few boxes of stuff that hadn’t been unpacked yet. I saw no sign of it. So I sighed and mailed off a check for $25.50, which wasn’t a trivial amount for me at the time.
Damnit, that’s why I wanted to close my accounts with them, to make sure there weren’t any such shenanigans! I guess I should have asked the guy to check for any outstanding fines or loans.
Well, I used to work in a library, so I’d often have 60-80 items out at one time, and keep them almost forever.
I went on a 3 week vacation once and looked at my record when I returned. Some of my outstanding books were 6 months + overdue (I was a little lax in returning books), and had finally gone into default (return the book or pay the replacement value!!!) I hit $455.87!!!
Even after I returned the books, I still had a fine over $80.00!!! :smack:
Now that I’m a grown-up, I’m much better. The largest fine I’ve had in the past 10 years was $22.00 for a book my daughter lost.
We had a patron taking an art class who checked out his materials at the beginning of the quarter, and returned them at the end. His fine before returning the books was $1237.82. After they were returned, it was $45.50. He said it was the best price he ever paid for textbooks.
Eli
The highest I’ve had was $160, but I contested it down to $60. My library has a flat fee replacement rule, any book - $100, and I returned the book!
They named the new wing after me.
Seriously, though, about $60.00. Who knew that a month could go by that quickly with so much to read?
I did the same thing.
Later on I had a travel bag of mine stolen on a train. It had a library book in it, so I had to replace it: $30.00
I once got a bill for $1040. It almost killed me. I went to talk to the library people and pull it down to $40.
Those are almost hospital bill type numbers!
I had a friend who ended up with an $1,100 bill after leaving a stack of books in the living room for a few months. He got it down to $200 after returning them.
My bill is in the $70’s right now.
Although, I recall when I was younger there was an episode of the Muppets or Sesame Street or something where they talked about this guy who just never returned his library book and just didnt go back to the library (they were placing the emphasis on how much he owed at his time of death, but I zoned out for that part). So I remember one day my book was late so I decided to keep it and never go back to the library because it seemed easier. I then got threatening letters so I had to take it back. But because I had the book for so many months I assumed that the fine would be huuuuuge, so I didn’t return til like 3 years later to find out it was $12. (I had forgotten about underage fines.) God that was a long story, had a point though. Somewhere.
I had to pay a $240 library fine once at Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario. University libraries tend to charge much higher fines than your local public library, for the simple reason that other students might need the book.
Anyway, I was terribly embarassed by such a high fine. Until I went and told them I was there to pay a huge fine (they won’t let you graduate with outstanding fees) and they pulled out a big printout of people with outstanding fines to root through for my name. There were people on the list with fines in the THOUSANDS of dollars.
None of the three libraries I belong to charges late fees…well one does but if you return the books the computer writes off the fine overnight. They just sent me a letter about the 3 books I have out at the moment asking for their return or payment of their replacement cost.
In the interests of full disclosure the books I currently have overdue are:
Amateur Detectives by Elaine Raco Chase and Anne Wingate
The Unknown Darkness by Gregg O. McCrary
Let’s Dance by Paul Bottomer
I think my highest has been $23 dollars in straight fines, not replacement costs. I’ve only ever lost …well, damaged, one book, and had to pay $25 for that, but it’s still readable and is a great quilting book, so I didn’t mind.
My mother thinks that library fines are a sign of great moral decay and gets very upset everytime a fine notice arrives from the library. I tell her I think of it as my contribution to the library’s budget to buy new books, and that no one at the library hates me for incurring a small fine. She’s not convinced. Since I can renew books on the computer there really is only my laziness to blame for late fees, but I consider it a small price to pay for all the great stuff I get to take out.
I once had a book out for YEARS (literally) and we never got the overdue notices because we moved house and didn’t tell them. My fine was over $300 but the librarians cut it down to $10 because they weren’t completely batshit insane. Whew.
If my library is anything to go by, they love you for it! 
Yikes, I feel better about myself. My biggest fine, from a university library, was maybe $20 for a batch of books I kept too long. I returned them at the end of the semester, and they just tacked the fine onto the next semester’s tuition. So, it was taken care of pretty invisibly.
$60.something for around 15 books that I had on loan. I kept wanting to get the books back on time, but I wanted to study some more thoroughly and didn’t get around to reading some of the others until they were past due. It was also a scheduling problem… that library was pretty far away and out of my usual way so I kept delaying for an excuse when I might be heading in that direction. I also believed that since they were all on loan through the mail from various other libraries around the state that I couldn’t renew them…still don’t know if this is true or not.
I paid down $40 and they wouldn’t forgive the rest, so I haven’t been back. They do have a canned food day in exchange for fines so I might wait for that and see if I can clear my name.
My elementary school used to charge ten cents a day in late fines for books checked out from their library. I recently (re)discovered that I still have a book (an Agatha Christie novel) that I checked out in the fourth grade.
I am very tempted to go return it just to see if someone will calculate the fine for me.
My biggest fine levied (brought down on appeal) was either, and I do forget, $1133 or $3311. It was at the University of Minnesota library. I had gone to the library with a friend who was a grad student and we both checked out a large number of books. What I found out after the fact, was that I didn’t have the same borrowing privliges as a grad student, I could only keep books for 2 weeks, not 8 (or whatever it turned out to be). Since nobody had actually requested the books I had, the dropped the fine to something like $100.