SAN JOSE — Three people owe the San Jose Public Library more than $10,000 for overdue or lost books, seven more racked up fines totaling more than $5,000 and nearly 130 face penalties of at least $1,000, records obtained by this newspaper show.

How book-borrowers could amass such a staggering debt is hard to say — the city refuses to divulge who they are. But San Jose’s highest unpaid individual library fines, as well as the total penalties owed, dwarf those in San Francisco or Oakland.

“How do you get to $10,000?” retired engineer and San Jose library regular Doug Thayer, 66, said when asked about the figures. “I don’t see how that could happen. Where do they put the books? Why doesn’t the city cut them off?”

But those stunning figures aren’t a surprise to Councilman Pierluigi Oliverio, the City Council’s liaison to the library, who recommended an amnesty program to forgive fines if people return overdue items.

Oliverio says the problem is that San Jose allows people to check out 100 items at once — double what’s allowed in other Bay Area cities. Oakland’s limit is 40, and San Francisco’s is 50.

“To have people hoard 100 items is ridiculous,” Oliverio said. “It’s too much. There should be some level of responsibility in checking out items and returning them to have other people utilize them.”

The councilman suggested allowing residents check out 20 items at once, but said even that is “extremely generous.”

San Jose Library Director Jill Bourne said the 100-item limit was been in place before she started three years ago. She’s willing to consider changes to the policy, but doesn’t believe it’s an issue.

“We have no reason to believe that the policy of allowing up to 100 items causes a problem in itself,” Bourne said. “A patron may check out as many items as they wish, return or renew them on time, and there would be no fines at all.”

Bourne couldn’t say how borrowers could rack up a $10,000 fine or how many books they checked out.

The library blocks cards after a patron accumulates $10 or more in fines, and automatically sends notices to those who have overdue materials via phone, email or mail, though that information may not be up to date.

San Jose’s libraries charge twice as much in fines as those in San Francisco or Oakland: 50 cents each day an item is late, up to $20 per item. They are charged the cost of the item after 28 days, plus a $20 “handling fee.”

San Francisco libraries charge 10 cents per day for late items, but only up to a $5 maximum. Seniors get a discount, and youths under 17 are excluded. The processing fee for lost items is just $5.

At Oakland libraries, borrowers pay 25 cents a day for overdue books, up to a $6 maximum, and there is no processing fee for lost items.

Macey Morales of the American Library Association couldn’t say whether individual late fees topping $10,000 are exceptional, as no one seems to track such things.

Greater sums have been alleged, though not collected. In 2010, the New York Society Library finally got back its copy of The Law of Nations, which was checked out by George Washington in 1789. It was 221 years overdue. The head librarian there joked that Washington is off the hook for $300,000 in overdue fines.

Guinness World Records cites $345.14 as the “world’s largest fine for an overdue library book.” It was paid for a poetry book borrowed from a public library in Illinois in 1955.

Oliverio and others say City Hall should release the names of people who owe the library thousands of dollars.

“It puts a face to who that person is,” he said. “If you’re trying to change behavior, letting people know serves that purpose.”

Orhan Hodzic, 18, a San Jose State freshman studying animation, agreed.

“It’s a public service and you’re abusing it,” Hodzic said. “The less money they get, the more someone else has to pay, because it’s a public service.”

Peter Scheer, executive director of the First Amendment Coalition, a government watchdog group, said, “The public has a right to know the names of individuals who may owe the city where they live thousands and thousands of dollars.”

But Bourne countered by saying confidentiality is a “primary tenet of the public library” and goes hand in hand with the values of access and democracy.

Vice Mayor Rose Herrera, who had the newest library branch open in her district at Evergreen Village Square, agrees with reducing the 100-item limit, but she would oppose “publicly shaming” people who owe for overdue books, saying it “causes emotional anguish for people.”

“I think that’s a pretty severe thing to do,” Herrera said.

Contact Ramona Giwargis at 408-920-5705. Follow her at Twitter.com/ramonagiwargis.