by Finally, there is something cats can do for humans.
The Worcester Public Library in Worcester, Massachusetts, announced that through the end of March, people who have lost or damaged a book or other borrowed item can bring in a photo, drawing or magazine clipping of a cat and reactivate their greeting cards. library. .
The library calls the program March Meowness, a way for the seven-branch system to forgive (or is that fur-giving?) community members who misplaced a book or damaged a borrowed item, and then never returned to avoid pay it. he.
In just a few days, the program has already generated hundreds of returns, multiple posts of random cat photos on the library’s Facebook page, and photos and drawings posted on a growing “cat wall” in the main building.
NPR’s local affiliate, WBUR, described it as a “never-tried initiative” and urged customers to hurry up and “act like meows.” So far, the answer, WBUR said, is “good cat” for Jason Homer, the library’s executive director.
Homer said in an interview Monday that about 400 people had their library accounts unlocked and borrowing privileges restored after bringing in their cat photos or drawings. Any cat will do, or even, really, any creature will do.
“We take a lot of honorary cats,” Homer said. “Any unruly animal.”
If you don’t have a cat? No problem. A catless 7-year-old who never returned a “Captain Underpants” book had his library card reactivated after staff gave him paper and crayons to draw one.
Like many public libraries in the United States, libraries in Worcester, a city of about 200,000 people (and their cats) southwest of Boston, are trying to encourage people to emerge from the few, lonely days of the pandemic. Used as vaccination sites during the coronavirus pandemic, the city’s libraries have once again become vibrant community spaces, offering crafts, wellness courses and seminars on how to avoid fraud.
Homer said that at the beginning of the pandemic many people lost books while moving, or students left them in classrooms, not anticipating that it would be long before they returned.
The library serves an urban population that Homer described, generally, as families who work multiple jobs.
Charging fees would be counterproductive, he said.
“We know that life gets in the way,” he said.
The library had previously attempted to increase attendance and fee forgiveness programs with canned food drives. But cats found their way into the spotlight, just like they do. The Meowness program took shape after several months of brainstorming by a library task force that came together to come up with a creative way to get people back through the doors.
“It really snowballed from there,” Homer said. “We were just trying to find the lowest possible barrier.”
About 101,601 cards have been issued across the library’s seven branches. Of them, 4,297 had been blocked, including 300 belonging to students, most of them from primary schools.
“You know what? It’s okay, we forgive you,” Mr. Homer explained. “Just show us a picture of a cat.”
Although the library had stopped charging fines for late returns, many people facing charges for lost items simply stayed away. A woman who had lost DVDs from her library in 2016 regained access to her account with a photo of a cat, Mochi. Customers have sent in photos of their cats lying on a cat tree, ignoring a dog and staring at the camera from a chair or rug.
Homer said using cats as a vehicle to forgive patrons for losing or damaging books or other borrowed items could help soften the stereotype of the harsh librarian.
“We don’t really have people with high buns and ‘hush’ anymore,” he said. “We are still book lovers, cardigan lovers and cat lovers.”
