Four-hundred disenfranchised Tauranga children and teenagers have had the slate wiped clean, their shame erased, their reading rights restored. The four hundred were on the Tauranga City Council libraries' blacklist – they had each accumulated more than $10 debt for overdue fines, 20 cents a day for a late return and their library card blocked. No more books.

But not any more. Readers and reading are to be encouraged, not excluded.

'We want to do everything to keep the library accessible to young readers,” says TCC's two-books-a-week libraries manager Jill Best. She's a quick reader and takes a book to work each day to consume with her sandwiches. Even though there's an inventory of 300,000 to choose from right outside her office door.

'Late fines are a real barrier that stop children and families from using and benefiting from the resources the public library has to offer.”

And that's not a library's business, according to Jill. 'Reading is an essential life skill and the city libraries provide tools to enable and support children as they learn to read.”

And to put the problem in some perspective, there are 48,000 card-carrying library users in Tauranga, approaching half the city's population. So only .833 percent are transgressing.

And overdue library books, defaulters and fines are just part and parcel of the running of a library. 'There are always going to be people who are perennially late” says TCC team leader of the libraries' children's and teenagers' services Michelle Anderson. 'Like myself.”

And if we take time to understand, each late library book has an interesting backstory. 'People may struggle with fines because of a household budget,” says Michelle. Books may get misplaced or lost behind cushions or car seats and there are transport issues.

During TCC's Annual Plan process one of the key criticisms of scrapping library fines was: 'This isn't going to teach children responsibility”.

Michelle goes into bat for the kids again. Because for a lot of kids it wouldn't be possible to get to the library themselves.

'Children have very little ability to get to a city library without assistance. They are dependent on being taken and so it's up to the parents to assume that responsibility.”

And anyhow, librarians would rather see a child late with the odd library book and still coming to the library to read. But all this doesn't mean immunity. The city's assets will be zealously guarded, the interests of the ratepayer protected.

'We have a very efficient system of recovering books,” says Jill. 'If a book is a week late we start emailing and if the book still isn't returned after 28 days the book is considered lost and the customer charged the cost of replacement.”

Most late and ‘lost' books find their way home. But for those that don't, the loaner might be required to pay for the book. And if necessary a debt collector could be called in to recover that debt.

Then there are damaged books. 'Toddlers will be toddlers,” says Michelle. 'They chew.”

So does the family dog. Others get wet and torn, dunked and daubed. 'That happens reasonably often and it must be expected,” says Jill. 'But people are expected to, and do, put things right.” By paying for a replacement.

And the signs are good, according to Jill.

'Since the fines were scrapped we have begun to see books being returned that we presumed were lost. So we are enthusiastic about allowing children who had been shut out of the library being able to use the library again.”

Some haven't waited for an invitation. The librarians talk fondly of a 15-year-old, who was obviously a passionate reader but deprived of a library card.

'She would walk across the Mataphi rail bridge to the library every Sunday afternoon,” says Michelle. 'We didn't quiz her but we assumed she must have lost a library book and her parents wouldn't allow her to have a library card.”

She was a very determined reader. She needed and wanted to read. 'She couldn't take a book out but she would hide the book she was reading in the library so she could come back to it the following weekend.”

Good stories aren't just in the library books.