Fine Free Forever!

We acknowledge the impact of the cost of living crisis on students at this time, and with this decision we endeavor to ease the financial pressure on students and ensure that they have full access to our lending collections at all times. 

Research has shown that students who use their university library are more likely to achieve academic success. Fines are traditionally seen as a barrier to full library engagement by students and may deter them from seeking out additional loans for class activity and research. 

While we have removed fines for overdue material, we would encourage staff and students to renew loans as required, and return them promptly when no longer needed. We wish to give all our students fair access to library materials - active circulation of material benefits all who use the library. To encourage the timely return of library material, library accounts containing overdue books will be frozen. Once all overdue items have been returned, the account will be reactivated and borrowing permissions will be restored.

Replacement charges for lost or long overdue books will remain in place to ensure that library collections are adequately maintained going forward. Once a long overdue item is returned to the library, the fine will be removed. We encourage the return of long overdue books at this time.

We would like to thank DCU’s Student Union for their positive contribution to the discussion around the elimination of overdue fines.