Scofflaws!

The question is whether those who offer credit — who these days seem to have little problems extending it to virtually anyone — have a problem with your overdue library book:

Eleven years ago, the Queens Library system, the largest in the nation by circulation, hired a professional enforcer to collect the 25-cents-a-day late fines as well as missing library materials from books to DVDs to rare musical scores.

The gambit has paid off handsomely. The haul so far: $11.4 million, about half of that in fines. That’s a lot of quarters.

. . .

It works. About 70 percent of the people contacted by the company [Unique Management Services] (who, in Queens, have ignored or missed four notices from the library) return some of their overdue materials or pay part of their fines.

“Once reported, this adverse information can stay on your record for seven years!” declares one of the company’s standard letters, which goes on to warn that car dealers, department stores and banks may learn of the library users’ misdeeds. “Why allow this to happen?”

Rabbi Avrohom Sebrow of Far Rockaway said he was flabbergasted when it happened to him.

As a child in Forest Hills, Rabbi Sebrow said, he loved to visit his local branch, and he grew up to be an enthusiastic library patron. He is a teacher at a yeshiva, where instilling reverence for texts and scholarship is central to his calling. Sometimes, like many library patrons, he is late in returning a book, he admitted in a recent interview, but he said he always paid his fines.

In 2005, Rabbi Sebrow said, he was overwhelmed after the birth of twin daughters and found himself six months overdue on materials he had checked out from the North Forest Park branch in Forest Hills. He cannot remember exactly what was late, but he thinks that several CDs were involved. He received a letter from Unique Management, which also uses the name Unique National Collections, demanding $295.40 — the cost of replacing the materials, plus $66 in late fees.

“I figured, ‘I’ll take care of it eventually,'” Rabbi Sebrow said. He did not believe the section of the letter that threatened to report him to credit agencies. “I thought it was a complete empty threat,” he said.

But when he applied for a mortgage and a credit card, he discovered that the oversight had blemished his credit record.