St. Johns County Libraries Drop Sunday Hours, Raise Overdue Fines Starting in October

St. Johns County Public Library branches will no longer be open on Sundays starting Oct. 4, and overdue fines are going up Oct. 1, the first fee increase in more than ten years. The St. Johns County Public Library System (SJCPLS) announced the changes on Sept. 16, and they will touch nearly every household in the county that checks out a book, brings a kid to storytime, or uses a meeting room on the weekend.

The county says the new schedule is built around actual visitation and circulation data, not budget cuts. Branches will keep their Monday through Saturday in-person hours, and some evening hours are being adjusted to match when people actually show up. Digital resources, e-books, audiobooks, research databases and online learning tools, stay open 24/7 regardless of what the front doors are doing.

"Our commitment to the residents of St. Johns County remains unchanged," said Debra Rhodes Gibson, the library system's director of library services, adding that the changes are guided by careful analysis of visitation data and are meant to keep operations sustainable while matching staffing to when the community actually uses the branches.

What changes Oct. 1: the fees

Overdue fines have not moved in more than a decade, according to the library system. The new fee schedule takes effect Oct. 1 and runs through Sept. 30, 2027.

Item type	Daily fine	Max fine per item
Books, magazines, DVDs, Blu-ray, CDs, audiobooks	$0.35	$10.00
Lucky Day, Reference, InterLibrary Loan items	$1.00	—
Book Club Kits	$1.00	$10.00
Library of Things items	$1.00	$25.00

The county describes the update as part of a broader cost analysis it conducted, not something specific to the library system alone. The full fee schedule is posted on the library system's website.

What changes Oct. 4: the hours

Sunday service will end system-wide. Before the change, the Main, Southeast, Bartram Trail and Ponte Vedra Beach branches were open Sundays from 1 to 5 p.m., while Anastasia Island and Hastings were already closed that day. Starting Oct. 4, none of the county's branches will offer Sunday hours. Some evening hours are also shifting, though every branch will still operate in person Monday through Saturday.

For families who use Sunday afternoons for library trips, that means shifting plans to a weekday evening or Saturday. Branches that used to offer that 1 to 5 p.m. Sunday window will need to fold that visitation into the six remaining days.

The county has not said how staffing hours freed up by the Sunday closures will be redeployed, or whether additional evening-hour changes are planned for specific branches beyond the general adjustment. Residents can check hours and fees for their home branch directly at sjcpls.org or by calling ahead before a Sunday trip that no longer exists.

Stay with St. Johns Community Website for more on how county services are shifting, and follow us on Facebook for updates as they post. Got thoughts on the new library hours or fines? Join the conversation in our Community Forum. For more on decisions shaping local government and county services, visit our government and politics coverage, or catch up on other St. Johns County news.

Header photo: Michael Rivera / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)