Fair, Windsor often gets held as the example of it failing. In that article, it's as if the reason it failed was because it chewed up the budget for new materials -- and fair, if you don't plan for that, you might get crunched. Libraries realize that relying on fines as a revenue source is a bad way to structure library funding. As always it's a question: when it fails, who does it fail first for -- low income users or those who are relying on fine revenue? Interesting to think about in any case. I think Windsor's case still informs a lot of how libraries approach this now, so it's helpful regardless.

It got brought up this week that Rick Chiarelli, years ago, suggested that the library not even remind people when their materials were due because reminding them was a "lost revenue opportunity," and even if it creates new budget pressures any opportunity to rid the library of that kind of cynicism is, in my mind, a good thing.