From the time the door unlocks until it locks again at the end of the day the library drives the moments for self away. I need to write a blog entry, and have two requests for information, twenty-two Interlibrary Loan requests to search for and find, new books on the way, emails to answer and a four man crew to watch over and train.  I am lucky to have the crew, or I wouldn’t be able to process the circulation of items and the patron requests. When I consider working in a Public Library, and I do sometimes, I only have to be reminded that I was a bit bored there and the hours dragged on certain days.  I get dragging days here only when there is no movement and I have finally caught up on my work, which happens so infrequently I don’t remember the last time.

At the McNeil Island Corrections Center branch Library we started the week with the last day of the previous month, which means reports and data to compile. I lose an inmate clerk on Monday because he took out his anger on another inmate in the Unit, a chapel porter, and rumor has it he got the first punch in, but after the table turned over and they got on the floor without room to move around the porter cleaned up on him. Prison humor, sorry. They both ended up in F unit Seg, and by Wednesday I had picked some thick Historic novels for his reading, twenty-three hours alone is twenty-two too much for one’s mind. I can’t start the hiring process until his hearing and the judgement is given. His chances of staying in Minimum Custody and on McNeil Island are very slim. I did the inmate clerk payroll on Tuesday and turned it in, everyone will get something for their best efforts last month, less than forty-five dollars and more than thirty.

Three inmate clerks mean that we barely kept ahead of the patrons, and seem to have lost control of at least four items, don’t know if they were improperly checked out, but they aren’t where they should be. I suspect I have a frazzled circulation clerk that isn’t looking at the computer screen because he has too much going on and there are more big ugly guys waiting for his attention. It is important to check that screen, we are about to receive sixty-one CDs and they will be hot items. The first CD we had was gone in about thirty minutes and no one let on that it had arrived. Our audit by the Corrections Oversight team was published and I made sure that my supervisors had a copy to feel very good about, I printed a copy for my historical record. I am identified as Earl Dungey Librarian (which I am not, but Library Keeper is too special for publication).

On Thursday my supervisor visited and was distracted by the amount of Reference material behind the circulation counter, so she weeded, and I ordered up to date replacements, withdrew old and ugly stuff, and discussed future purchases. I have less that six hundred dollars to spend and three hundred of it is in the current book cart with Baker and Taylor. She also approved my last book cart and it will go through Acquisitions. I was thinking as I wandered the library looking at books, that our Westerns are worn and weak, they just don’t write enough of them any longer – well, the traditional ones – cowboy or gunslinger rides horse saves ladies in distress and then rides off.. we seem to have too many of the “urgently romantic” men without honor on the shelves now. What I would love to see is somebody donating Leatherbound Louis Lamour and Zane Grey to our shelves. I am sure someone out there bought them and has out lived them. I do live in a fantasy world, don’t I?

My Work Day: I unlock the library and start turning it on, taking off my jacket and stuff to stay awhile, change the backup tape, put a new battery in the radio on my belt, type in passwords for the computers and the level of user, go unlock the book return box and switch bins.  When movement is called the crew will report in, I log the time and greet them, the talk dwells on whatever happened since the last we saw each other – dreams, visits, plans for today’s work and adjustments in operations. They check for overdues on hold, ILLs, and reserves against the incoming materials. The ILL clerk starts getting the outgoing ILLs bagged and addressed and all the paperwork pulled and the status changed. I look for incoming email, ILL requests and missions from headquarters. The new books are linked and finished processing, the Acquisitions Report checked against our version of reality – and there are too many missing book orders so a lot of typing is done to tell them so. I get to check every outgoing package for content address and then seal it up for shipping. After the morning work is done and Recall is called the crew leaves together and I take the mail and the distribution to the Communications Center and the Mailroom. Dropping off and picking up, some days there are three bins full with new book boxes and some days only half a bin without the newspapers.
Lunch is alone, in the quiet of the library with a new magazine to browse in front of me, the pickle, sandwich and apple don’t take long and I am up and breaking down the mail, newspapers, magazines, and opening incoming ILLs, ours returning or those requested. I go online the log in the reception, print a sheet for the item and give them to the ILL clerk. The crew starts to trickle back in after their lunch, which was not much better than mine but in the company of their peers, under the watch of the Corrections Officers. The book return box is emptied again and the library prepares for the influx of patrons.
I register new patrons, the Chain came in yesterday and the new guys start showing up, I look for information, find books that are asked for and show my clerks how to find Labor Unions in the Yellow pages. The library is humming, actually it is closer to a low roar, but it is a mellow roar not an angry one. Different groups at different tables, the Corrections Officer that monitored the movement into the library cut it off at forty, and sent about twenty inmates away. As the other recreation or education services are cut or closed because of staffing problems or weather the library becomes much bigger an event in the inmates’ choices for time well spent.
We are open for three periods this afternoon, from 12:40 to 3:45 and the time flies, I am not finished when Recall is sounded and everyone moves out. The crew tells me to have a great weekend and they will see me on Monday.  I turn all the computers off, put the radio and certain keys away, I finish typing the missing books on my response to the November report and email it to headquarters and log off the computer.

When I give briefings to visitors to the library I am often asked ‘what do they read?’ and the cheap throw away answer is ‘True Crime, of course’. The truth is that ‘they’ (the inmates) read everything that you do, except they can’t go online and the Department of Corrections has a list of books and types of information that would be bad to have them read while in prison, mostly about security issues. I think the more important question is ‘what do they steal from the library?’

I mostly think that only stupid people steal from a free library inside a prison fence where they can never get it outside. But to what they steal, they start with stealing the sports section of the newspapers, for betting on fantasy football or other real events. They steal the colored pictures of beautiful models digitally enhanced, if not also under a plastic surgeon’s care. Those things are easy to hide and pull out when one has forgotten what their sexual desires were focused on. Some of the fancies are a bit stranger but I have purposely missed mentioning those.

The theft that is costly is of books, ‘the self-weeding collection’ as we in the prison libraries understand it, and the most popular ones are the ones that give them POWER. Robert Greene puts together a book, titled “The 48 Laws of Power” and it is immediately stolen. Yes, we do have a 3M security system and all the books are sensitized and how long do you think it takes them to figure it out? However it happens, the book is now gone, and we buy a replacement. Robert Greene comes out with another title “The Art of Seduction”, and it is immediately stolen and I buy a replacement. Do you see the pattern here? He has a third book “33 Stategies of War” and we haven’t seen it since the second circulation. I am buying all three in paperback and will read them for they do have some excellent information that I have gleaned from a life time of reading, and Robert Greene found the same and put it together nicely. I expect they will also be stolen, for the inmates that steal from our libraries inside of prison have lost everything, feel no control of their lives and are afraid of most people and things around them. So they steal what they hope will make them stronger, and then don’t read it, just hide it and hug it for warmth and feel it makes them a player again.

Kind of like those self improvement books, how to build one’s abs – you can buy five or six of them – but until you start curling your body and flexing the core and working tirelessly in motion the abs don’t change – not from hugging those books or putting them on the shelves, they must be read, practiced and re-read and understood. But then I did mention what kind of people steal books, didn’t I? Luckily most inmates just check the books out and return them very late, overdues abound, for inmates have a personal time that doesn’t match the date due stamp – not very fair, most books come in on time or are re-newed, circulation is about seven thousand items per month, and I only have to replace the stuff that wears out or is lost. I only have about twenty books ‘missing’ in action a month. Write another one, Robert Greene.

The segregation unit houses those inmates that have to be apart from the rest, and for twenty-three hours a day they are alone with their cell and two paperback books. So the library provides two thick paperbacks a week for them to read. My recommendations are: Border Triology, Killer Angels, Gates of Fire, A Soldier of the Great War, King Hereafter, Eisenhorn, Wheel of Time, Dune, Song of Ice and Fire, Lord of the Rings, Lonesome Dove, Honor Harrington, Wars of Light and Shadow. Those that are part of a series are only a problem if the author dies with the series unfinished, if they don’t write faster and publish more it could happen. Still there are patrons from Seg that only want magazines with lots of pictures, I provide those also. When you have nothing to do, reading is a great way to escape from your solitude. I have read those titles so I must share the way out.

I have three inmate library clerks to train of four positions, and it is amazing how little they know about work and life and the library. I have had much success training real workers in the past, they understand work and what kind isn’t a problem, for all real work is similar. If I get someone with good life skills I can train them also, great attitude and harmony with the lesser universe and work is just a different instrument to play on and they dance through our work day. I could blame lack of library knowledge on the school system, television or credit cards and book stores — but it could be they just shouldn’t be library clerks if they were never real library patrons – how much customer service can you explain to someone that has never been a customer?

Less than a week on the job and they already want the library to be run differently, they want more creative time, they want to expound on their previous job and how wonderful they did there, they are becoming afraid to ask questions of me (have I been biting their heads off, or just am snappy having little tolerance for stupidity). I emphasized that they must look at the computer screen as they scan barcodes, and make sure they are doing what they think they should. But they know everything about computers and it doesn’t look cool to keep looking at work instead of holding a wonderful conversation. They don’t understand they have so much more to learn, that fellow needs more time shelf reading and shelving. There is one advantage in their slow work habits, they can’t get ahead of me, even when they try they are falling behind the power curve – it is all mine. The experienced clerk and I laugh a lot about the new guys, but then we keep hoping tomorrow they will be a bit better and learn another lesson or two. We are making them earn that forty-two cents an hour, shouldn’t I get some extra compensation, too?

I give all the assistance I can in each patron’s search for truth and its roots. The prison has taken most of their identity away and stuffed them in white t-shirts and khaki pants. All alone they have little power, together with a tradition and a history they become greater than just felons. They know that they can’t be Americans any more, they have no Rights when they leave the Corrections system, as former felons they can’t have weapons, can’t serve in office nor vote. Unless their civil rights are restored – the law makes a felon a permanent lower class in America.

The only way I can make a big difference in the prison is with a respectful, challenging but helpful education of the inmate into what is in the library, what we can bring into the library and what he can do with his new knowledge. He has to do all the work, and he has to survive and he has to spread the word about what he has found. I always like one old hand inmate leading a new guy from the incoming chain around to get registered and shown where the good books are, another one for our side.

Earl Dungey – McNeil Island Corrections Center Library

And many have done a “little time”  They include Malcolm X, Nelson Mandela, St. Paul, Christopher Columbus, and writers Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Miguel Cervantes.  How one gets inside a prison isn’t as important as what they do there and after they are released, or so this illustrious list of names would have you believe.

There are fifteen prisons, one of them for women in Washington, and another will be opening soon.  They house about 18,000 inmates, only ten of the fifteen have a contract for library services with the Washington State Library.  There are 28,000 offenders in community supervision with local library support. Budget cuts have brought the library staff in the branch libraries down to one FTE per branch.  This means that the library branch is only going to be open for twenty hours per week, in institutions where the population is from 800 to 2400 inmates, most inmates will not be able to get to the library for their needs.  The services provided are common to most public libraries:

·     Books (including large print, graphic novels, YA, children’s picture, audio)

·     Magazines (including popular, foreign language –Spanish, Vietnamese)

·     Music CDs and Cassettes (all genres)

·     Interlibrary loan

·     Reference (no legal research)

·     Employment (library clerks)

Before the major budget cuts under Governor Locke, there were two or three FTE per Corrections Center and the libraries were open five days a week with three evening hours to cover those inmates that were working, almost sixty hours for patron access.  The Department of Corrections staff was also served by the library and professional journals and books were available.  After the budget cuts the Corrections staff were no long a focal point of library operations in Corrections.  The library starts to be labeled as the Inmates’ Library, although there is still limited staff support.

One benefit of being the one full time employee at the library branch is that the training and responsibilities were increased, and the immediate supervision was reduced; the paraprofessional level and pay were increased to reflect the added responsibilities. The biggest disadvantage is lack of support and coverage for vacations and medical absence. So as soon as either happens the library is effectively closed except for some temporary assignment of a Librarian or Library Associate from another institution for a day or two. When the position becomes empty the hiring process begins immediately, but new hires will have to go through CORE training before being allowed to work their library branch.

And at the Department of Corrections… When the chance came to return to a prison library I jumped on it and have been fully employed ever since.  They just don’t describe the eight hour days and the mad rush of impatient patrons, all certain the universe revolves around them and only them first… and always. That might scare most gentle library types away…

I expect that if you haven’t worked inside a prison that you think there are too many terrible people around and it is dangerous, and that might be almost true. But I have about seven years in prison libraries and only one half-hearted fight the entire time I have been working, the real fights are held elsewhere so they can’t be interrupted by staff and the Emergency Response Team. The more dangerous problem is staff being influenced to break the rules for an inmate – name the rule and they will try to get a staff member to break it, there are almost as many illegal activities inside a prison as outside. When they put tobacco off limits inside the facility the inmates say it just changed the price of the tobacco – since a heavy smoker still smells like stale smoke, I would have to agree that someone is still smoking.

Still like the world outside the fence, most prisoners (inmates, felons and violators) inside the fence are going about behaving well and getting along. They do demand that staff obey the rules and regulations (although they are sure they are okay to break the ones they need to) and there is a long list of customs and polite manners that other inmates know and dare not break without paying the penalty for crossing the line. Everyone makes choices and stands on what they have chosen to do. I watch, work and talk about this and other things with the questioning patrons and penalized, every work day. One never needs count the minutes and the hours for the days fly full.

I need to expound on ILS, Institutional Library Services, to entice you to join in this happy fray.  You have a population of people separated from America’s culture and commerce, for healing and treatment or programming. This population needs access to the outside and a library can provide entertainment and education without subjecting the outside population, you, to the stress of contact with the separated persons. That could be what is going on, I am not sure, but some one has decided that a library can assist in the return of this special population to normal society. Is there empirical proof that a library can make an incorrigible into a better human being? I like to point to Red and Malcolm X, and expect that you know not everyone goes to nor uses the library for its maximum potential.

I work in the Institutional Library Services to help provide that help in finding one’s way out of the present and into a past and a better future. I know that I am called on daily to bring a change in knowledge, attitude and satisfy one’s question without an answer. Do I make a difference? only in that I open the door and allow some one in, they get to open the books and they have to have an open mind. That may be all the difference needed. More library keepers are needed far from the flag pole and all the glory in the Capital, the Washington State Library serves less than twenty institutions, serving over fifteen thousand or so patrons with no other library service.

We try to be the best library service, and don’t dwell on the fact that we are the only library service inside the prison – we compare ourselves with all Libraries as such.  I have worked at Tacoma Public Library and at Pacific Lutheran University’s Mortvedt Library. While I have to admit they have much larger collections, awesome budgets and dedicated professional staff, I have to say I feel more needed here inside the prison. My making the difference in many inmates’ day and hopefully their lives. Since we do have Interlibrary Loan (ILL) capabilities with OCLC’s First Search interface I do borrow many items from both TPL and PLU, making our joint service effective one patron at a time.

Many ways to measure our success as a library, but the one I liked was when going to my community public library I found a former inmate brousing the shelves.  I said hello and he tried to remember where he knew me from and I told him it was probably at another library on an island. It took a bit and then it dawned on him; you see I was in blue jeans and not wearing a tie, I don’t always look like the Library Guy.   He is still using the library — scored! another point for us.

Modern technology assures that no library staff is really alone, separated by miles, walls and fences perhaps but everyone is only a fax, phone call or email away. It is required that we check our email twice a day and respond. We share reference questions and circulation problems, coordinate efforts in coverage of absent library staff, illness or rare vacations and all through electronic transmissions. Still, it would be best if we would get together and share our experiences, training, trials and triumphs with each other face to face. You know,  like real people do.  So we have Quarterly Conferences, two days at a secret location where the agenda reflects the current challenges and commitments. 

It is good to get together, in 1998 when I first attended the conference there were over thirty staff from all the institutions we serviced, three mental health and nine correction centers. A bit overwhelming since they all knew each other and I was new. A few conferences later I told the new man coming into the group that tradition had it that the newest member of the institutional library services had to lead the group in a song, and he jumped up and led the group sing of Three Blind Mice. It is wonderful starting a new tradition and having new staff lead and join and blend in so well. No, it wasn’t a real tradition and didn’t become one, but the idea was to get to know each other, trust each other and enjoy being together.

So now, in 2008, we have eleven correction center and two hospital libraries and nineteen library staff and one great administrative support person holding us together.  We will have guest speakers, the State Librarian will attend and brief us on current progress and programs, we will discuss the upgrade of our Library software, the new procedures for overdues and reports. We will have a dress rehearsal of our presentation for the WALE Conference, Rehab, Recovery & Re-entry. It should be very interesting as we share our thoughts and try to improve our services to our patrons. If we remained in our institutions without getting together the supervisors and program manager would have to visit more to insure that the staff didn’t get isolated, or feel abandoned and isolated, alone.. always alone. We aren’t alone and get lots of connection by the quarterly meeting’s discussions and exchange.

  Sometimes we need a reminder that we mean something to the world – it seems to ignore my wishes so well. I was telling my program manager (yes, I am part of the programmed) that the stories we need to tell the Legislature are the ones about inmates that leave our libraries and become good citizens. But then good citizens don’t get in the news too much, do they? And I guess if I were jailed with Martin Luther King, Jr. during his protests and struggle I might share that, but being just a thug and a bad one that was caught and punished for it – that doesn’t get aired until you are sitting in the rocker at the old folks home. Well, this morning in the email was a letter with a name I didn’t recognize and was about to be deleted – like I would ever answer the people needing my help with their new found wealth and banking troubles.

“Hey Earl.

Well, The News Tribune article about the Library I keep open showed up Sunday morning. I am not a real librarian (MLS) to those that know, but am to those that want one and only get me. Nice picture, Mister Lui Kit Wong, you are even better than I anticipated – made me wish I was that nice looking guy in the picture. Brian Everstine hit the right note, and wasn’t jarring in his report, you the readers may make up your mind about what could be done. I will keep working on one better reader at a time…

From my telephone interview with Ms. Mudd — a PDF file of an article in the OCLC “Western Trek” magazine and page eight and nine are the result.

In the News

The Washington State Penitentiary West Complex opened its new 2,047 square foot library on Monday June 23, 2008.  Check out the KEPR TV news video about the opening .  Additional information can also be found at the Secretary of State site.