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In 1789, George Washington borrowed The Law of Nations from the New York Society Library. But, possibly busy with more pressing presidential tasks, he neglected to return it. It wasn’t until 2010 that staff at Mount Vernon learned of the missing book and offered to return a replacement copy, by which point Washington had accumulated a theoretical $300,000 in late fees.
Washington was guilty of a crime almost every reader has committed: checking out a book, reading it, and then leaving it on the shelf until there is too much dust on the cover to even consider returning the book and facing the pesky fines. The New York Society Library waived Washington’s fee, foreshadowing a practice libraries across the United States would adopt not just for founding fathers, but for everyday readers: amnesty.
📍 New York Public Library 📸: Sara Kuprowska
In 2017, San Francisco allowed all patrons to return overdue library items without late fees. The campaign recovered nearly 700,000 items including a collection of short stories titled Forty Minutes Late which, despite its title, was returned over a century late.
Some libraries allowed patrons to donate to food banks to waive late fees. Others allowed kids to “read off” their balances, where hours reading corresponded to dollars taken off the balance. But library programs across the United States seemed to agree: amnesty works.
Chicago’s 2012 amnesty program brought home more than 100,000 overdue items worth above $2 million. Chicago and Los Angeles each wiped close to $650,000 worth of late fees; the figure in St. Paul and New York was above $2 million.
📍 Boston Public Library 📸: Accidentally Wes Anderson
📍 Stony Island Arts Bank 📸: Tom Harris
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But it wasn’t just books that were coming back. It was people. Over 35,000 readers renewed or reapplied for library cards after Chicago’s amnesty, including patrons who said they had stayed away for years for fear of fines. One month after New York’s 2017 amnesty, over 40,000 children and teens who had previously owed fines used their library cards. The upsurge was most pronounced in the city’s lowest income neighborhoods.
Fee forgiveness erased the barrier that had shut so many people out of libraries, restoring access not just to books, but to the databases, classes, computers, and community events that libraries offer. The programs were so popular that amnesty campaigns became permanent fine-free policies in library systems in Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York. In the end, forgetting to return a book is a minor mistake. A lifetime without libraries is a big one.
