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more detrimental than beneficial to libraries with goals of meeting community <br />literacy needs. Early evidence from Colorado libraries that have changed <br />policies to be more accommodating of late, lost, and damaged materials offers <br />additional evidence to justify these recommendations. <br />Literature Review <br />Librarians have been discussing, and in some instances debating, the <br />propriety of charging fees for late, lost or damaged materials for decades. A <br />review of the professional and academic literature reveals only a handful of <br />small-scale studies of the effect of library fines on the borrowing behavior of <br />library users (Breslin & McMenemy, 2006; Hansel, 1993; Burgin & Hansel, 1984; <br />Burgin & Hansel, 1991; Reed, Blackburn & Sifton, 2014; Smith & Mitchell, 2005). In <br />absence of empirical proof of the effectiveness of fines and fees, there exists a <br />largely philosophical conversation in the literature with many authors in favor of <br />eliminating fines and fees --at the very least for children's materials --and focusing <br />on the inequitable access to materials for low-income families (Caywood, 1994; <br />Chelton, 1984; DeFaveri, 2005; Holt & Holt, 2010; Livingston, 1975; Venturella, <br />1998). <br />5 <br />