Last month I got an email alert from my credit monitoring agency and discovered that I had a delinquent bill of $12.00 due to some agency in Alabama. WHAT?!
I haven’t lived in Alabama for several years so I couldn’t imagine to whom I owed $12.00. So I wrote to the agency who posted the claim and asked for further details and as it turns out I had an overdue library fine from a research project I worked on SIX YEARS ago.
It boggles the mind that an organization wouldn’t have the capacity to contact me earlier than six years out. It also perplexed me that there was no initial attempt to collect payment BY the Auburn University of Montgomery library. Instead, they turned the account over to a collection agency, at some point, which then took its sweet time to attempt to collect payment.
For those who are curious, I was fined for the late return of the following six books:
- Henslowe’s Diary, vol.1, edited by Walter W. Greg
- Henslowe’s Diary, vol. 2, edited by Walter W. Greg
- Henslowe Papers, Being Documents Supplementary to Henslowe’s Diary, ed. by Walter W. Greg
- From Text to Performance in the Elizabethan Theatre: Preparing the Play for the Stage, by David Bradley
- Edward III by William Shakespeare, prepared by Roger Warren
- London Stage, 1660-1700: A Critical Introduction, by Emmett L. Avery and Arthur J. Scouten
Tommy Karr 