# Requirement change

The head librarian has had enough of people walking off with the dictionary for a month.

**Reference books now go out for three days, not three weeks.** Anything on the reference shelf —
that is what the section on the catalogue card is for — is due back three days after it is taken
out. Everything on the lending shelves is unchanged at three weeks.

A few things I want to be clear about, because they have caught us out before:

- **The fine is exactly as it was.** Fifty per started day late, no cap, on the member's account.
  A reference book two days late costs a hundred, the same as anything else two days late.
- **Nothing else about a reference book is special.** It counts towards the borrowing limit like any
  other book, it is blocked by owing five hundred like any other book, it goes back on the shelf
  when it comes back, and if somebody else already has the only copy you cannot have it.
- **The catalogue does not change.** The card already says which shelf a title lives on; we are not
  reprinting anything. What has changed is what that fact *means* when a book goes out.
- Three days means three days to the minute, the same way three weeks did. A reference book taken
  out at ten on Monday morning is due at ten on Thursday morning, and returning it at ten on
  Thursday morning is on time.
