Jeannie Remillard has this to share about the new puppy at SCCC: Her name is Athena…and she is the cutest little Beagle puppy you have ever laid your eyes on. When she first visited the library and came behind the desk to meet me, she was shaking with fright. By the time we filled her tummy with doggy treats and gave her much love we were sure she would remember her first visit to the library. Talk about cute…she jumped…
Sisters Brothers is a book about two brothers from gold-rush era Oregon and California who are employed as henchmen. They ride horses, camp out on the trail, try to gather clues about their target, and eventually uncover a lot more than they probably wanted to know about him. What starts out as a simple job becomes something more fantastic, and the two become entangled in the life of a man they set out to eliminate. As I was reading this book last…
Joyce Hanna, Library Associate at Airway Heights Corrections Center, received a phone call from an inmate’s mother this week thanking her for helping her son. She did not give his name because he is still at AHCC and she did not want to cause any problems for him. Joyce reports that “I explained that I was only doing my job and she told me that her son said that I did it with kindness and care which he does not…
Doug Gelis, one happy librarian with $1000 donation When the inmates at Washington Corrections Center for Women heard that my book budget was frozen ( again ) , they asked me if there was anything that they could do. I informed them that I could take donations. Soon after this the tier reps approached me and said they were going to do a fundraiser for the library. Last week I sent a check to Laura Sherbo for $1000.00 which is…
Library Snapshot day was a huge success for those of us who deal with the inmates and patients of Washington prisons and psychiatric hospitals; we see results everyday. However, it is nice when the general public gets a chance to see what we do every day as we walk into the different facilites of Washington State. This article in the Franklin County Graphic tells the story of the Coyote Ridge Corrections Center. Click on the newspaper clip for full article.
I’ve worked for Washington State Library at Clallam Bay Corrections Center for 17 years. I love what I do, but it isn’t always the easiest of jobs. The mood of the institution can get depressing at times. I have four library clerks, offenders that I work with on a daily basis. They have varying degrees of education but are all really good workers and for the most part have good attitudes. We laugh, talk books, sports, music, movies and all…
Stafford Creek Corrections Center has long welcomed the dogs from “Freedom Tails” dog program into the library, but never more so than on Library Snapshot Day 1/11/11. Many of the dog handlers are regular library patrons and they made a point to visit the library and were very happy to get their pictures taken. It went so well that they made it into the local newspaper of Aberdeen, The Daily World. Click on picture for full article.
The last few months I have been reading the emails posted on the ALA Libary Service to Prisoners Forum, and I have been very interested in the different ways the libraries handle the material and what they are able to do in each library. There seems to be a wide range of what the libraries offer, as well as how they are managed. Here in Washington State we run the prison libraries similar to a public library, but we really don’t…
I grew up in a library family and love freedom of information. At the end of September I will be sporting my “I Read Banned Books” button and giving out bookmarks of banned books. I speak fanatically about how wonderful it is that anyone can get information about anything if they have a library card. If I hear, “Should that be allowed in the Library?!?!?” I give a little lecture about how the only person who has a right to…
For anyone interested in the Institutional Library Services category, I’ll share a link to the Colorado Libraries blog, which has some similar content. You will also see accounts written by people from outside the field who were allowed to go inside some of the prisons and get a sense of what this work environment is like and how offenders use the libraries. It’s inspiring to see how the Colorado Correctional Librarians are networking by communicating their day-to-day experiences in the form of a live…