On May 01, East Hampton Public Library announces a paw-sitively unique forgiveness program for lost or damaged items called “MAY we see your dog?”
With this program, the East Hampton Public Library will forgive the fees of their patrons’ lost or damaged items in exchange of dog photos for the whole month of May.
And don’t worry! According to the Library, the dog on the photo don’t have to necessarily be yours!
“Show us a picture of your neighbor’s dog, your best friend’s dog, or just any dog you think is cute! Don’t have a camera or a phone? Draw us a picture of a dog,” the Library wrote.
The photos can also be shown in person to any library staff member, or sent to their email address.
You can also let them know if you’d like them to post the dog photo you submitted on their community pet board.
Here are the rules laid out by the Library in order to participate in their fee forgiveness program:
- The fee for one item only will be waived per patron
- The lost or damaged item must be owned by East Hampton Public Library only
- Item waived must be lost for at least 2 months or longer
- The program is applied to lost books, DVDs, and CDs only. No other item is included in this program aside from these three.
- Items are not guaranteed to be waived, and forgiveness will be given at the discretion of library staff
- Account holders must be present
According to the Library, they were inspired by the Worcester Public Library’s fee forgiveness program from March of this year.
The program was called “March Meowness” and the library’s patrons had their library fees forgiven in exchange for showing their library staff a cat photo.
The Library also said that they understand that accidents can happen and that they don’t want that to stop people from coming to the Library.
Christine Cachuela, East Hampton Public Library Director, told NBC News, “I just kept thinking it was such a wonderful way to bring patrons back to the library who might feel like they can’t come and enjoy our services, because they owe us for a book or a DVD or something that got damaged.”
